Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2011

with all new Nuge commentary.

what i bought yesterday that is applicable:

Sahara – sunrise (peters international – 1973) (proggy with scattered heaviness)

Z-Rocks – s/t (z records) (dunno the year. 79? 80? Probably 80. Americans obsessed with joe Jackson! Pretty funny. Sounds great too. Oh and the cars. Obsessed with joe Jackson and the cars.)

Widowmaker – s/t (jet/ua – 1976) (kinda essential if you ask me. more later.

Nervous Eaters – s/t (Elektra – 1980) (okay, not great.)

Mylon Lefevre – rock & roll resurrection (mercury – 1979) (sleeper of the century! Never dug mylon’s early 70’s southern rock/soul stuff, but this is a late-70’s glam boogie disco rock monster! Produced by allen Toussaint! God I love allen Toussaint in the 70’s.

Aware – new lease on life (iron face – 1989) (hometown nostalgia. Knew these dudes a little. Friends with my friends. Nice guys. anyway, straightedge hardcore, but straightedge hardcore with actual hard rock guitar solos.)

juicy lucy – s/t (vertigo – 1969) (nice original u.k. vertigo pressing! For 8 bucks!)

Big Stick – crack ‘n’ drag (blast first) (have no idea why I bought this. It was only 2 bucks though. I vaguely remember liking crack attack way back when. But I look at the lyrics now and go, um….)

Suzanne Fellini – s/t (Casablanca – 1980) (had high hopes for this, but, eh… to be fair, it wants to rock and has the power pop hooks, but just kinda falls flat.)

Gary O’ – s/t (capitol – 1981) (completely bonkers epic aor, um, something. haven't figured Gary out yet.)

Turner And Kirwan Of Wexford – absolutely and completely (peters international – 1977) (this is awesome. Hats off to whoever was responsible for the peters international cosmos series. Bringing euro-prog/psych to american heads in the 70’s. otherwise these albums would be near impossible to get here. Love the Esposito and Secret Oyster albums I have via peters. And now the sahara album and this one.)

Jimmy Pursey – imagination camouflage (polydor – 1980) (love pretty much everything this man did in the 70's and 80's with sham and without sham.)

The Sports – don’t throw stones (mushroom – 1978)

Mud – it’s better than working! (private stock – 1976)

t.i.m.e. – s/t (liberty)

Café De Paris – les variations (Buddah – 1975)

Get Sprouts – v/a (1980 belgian comp. album pressed in Holland. The kids, de kreuners, specimen & the rizikoos, toy, the employees, rick tubbax & the taxis, klang, ivy & the teachers, jo lemaire + flouze, the machines, once more, lavvi ebbel, tc.matic, the plant, telex. okay, more new wave than this thread may need, but interesting and a fun listen.)

Unit 5 – scared of the dark (clone – 1981) (excited to have this! Um, even though I’ve never heard it. But I kinda love everything clone/ohio/akron)

Nasty Pop – s/t (island – 1975)

Nervous Germans/Nervosen Deutschen – s/t (shatter records)

Madcats – s/t (buddah – 1979)

Blind Idiot God – s/t (sst – 1987) (had this on tape long ago and haven't heard it since. holds up better than it should given my aversion to most late-80's SST stuff. but i liked it back then, so i guess i should like it now. wasn't really into the dub side of things, but even that sounded kinda cool today.)

Ivar Avenue Reunion – s/t (rca – 1970) (needed this one! Goldberg, Musselwhite, and my heroes lynn carey and neil merryweather. so great! for fans of chicken shack, mama lion, CK Strong, Neil Merryweather, harmonicas, guitars, and anything else cool you can think of.)

Hardin and York – for the world (decca) (siked to find this too. Nice german pressing. half decent organ-heavy prog/rock and half ho-hum mellowness. but worth it for the good moments.)

Michael Quatro – bottom line (sri – 1981) (needed this too! this is total disco michael though. but i've been really into him lately.)

listened to this Ten Years After comp a couple/3 times - really dig the trax from Shhhh & Cricklewood Green LPs. UK blooze cut w/psychedelic edge.

http://www.asiahomecd.com/images/emusic/Ten_Year_Think_About_Chrysalis.jpg

still, feel like I could go the rest of my life w/o hearing "Im Going Home" again. fuck woodstock.

yeah, you should get a copy of cricklewood. such a great album. but i'm a pretty big fan above and beyond most people's TYA capacity.

really enjoying the Unit 5 album. probably too wimpy for Gorge, but chuck would like it if he doesn't have it. cuz chuck is a wimp. hahaha! just kidding. nice powerpopnewwave stuff.

Nervous Eaters demos and single -- "Just Head" -- were way better than what was delivered for a major label. Let's see if I can remember -- all dressed up as stylish boys on the back, all downhill after "Loretta." Too clean, not at all like the rep they earned out of playing Boston clubs like the Rat. Remember commenting on it for one of these earlier threads, maybe two years ago.

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

yeah, its like a different band later on. which is kinda sad. but i'm glad they got to make records. i'm still keeping this one.

i love this other album!

http://imheavyduty.heavydutyincorporated.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/nervouseatershotsteelacid.jpg

there is some good live nervous eaters stuff on youtube.

xhuxckkkkkkkkkk has to be a Nervous Germans fan! their song "show me your car" rules! and their song "Germans Can't Play Rock 'n' Roll" rules in a different way. and "stukas over surrey" also kinda rules. why weren't they huge?

they did a john peel session. they thank him on the back of this album. they thank conny plank too. they had an australian singer. the rest german. the singer was in the bands The Soho Jets and Razar.

yah, this album is killer. for real. i seriously dig. gorge you would dig "show me your car". they rage pretty good when they want to.

their second album - and last album - from 1983 was called Summer Of Love. definitely curious. they've got great riffs!

The Sports – don’t throw stones (mushroom – 1978)

Wow, you lucky duck, Scott. I have been looking for this for years! With "Who Listens to The Radio," right? Which was almost a hit in the states. Basically (as much as I remember them) early (as in first-two-album) Joe Jackson soundalikes from Down Under, but louder?

Blind Idiot God – s/t (sst – 1987)

Instrumental dub metal, except the dub and the (avant/pigfuck) metal were unfortunately different songs. Liked this when it came out, to the extent that the looooooong SST roundup I did for the Voice that year (which is slated to be revived in a retropective book of my writing coming out later this year) highlighted B.I.G. along with Screaming Trees and Dinosaur Jr. albums as my three favorites from that year on the label. Undoubtedly seriously overrated all three, but still. Wish I still had this anyway.

Need to catch up with here the stack of LPs I bought at End Of An Ear last week. Will soon, I hope.

Suzanne Fellini – s/t (Casablanca – 1980)

"Love On The Phone" on this is still a lot of fun Scott, you gotta admit. Rest is...okay. Keepable, at least. One song with chord progressions out of "I Wanna Be Your Dog", I believe. Which counts for something.

Also, George and I both talked a bunch about Widowmaker on last year's thread. "Essential" stretches it, I'd say, but album has some pretty good moments, here and there.

Couple of the albums I bought for 50 cents at End Of An Era last week:

Crabby Appleton Rotten To The Core (Elektra 1971) - Was expecting this, based on their 1970 hit "Go Back," to sound more Badfinger-style powerpop. It's actually rootsier, chooglier, folksier, more hippiefied and even countrified than that. High-ptched male singer frequently sounds like a female singer. Not bad though, and the real surprises are the two side-closers plus maybe "Lucy" at the start of Side Two, which are good, twisted, swinging rips of Led Zeppelin in third-album Celtic blues mode.

The Kids Anvil Chorus (Atco 1975) Didn't realize this was actually the Heavy Metal Kids' second album when I picked it up, until Scott and George (and Martin Popoff, in his '70s book) explained it to me. But that explains a lot, I guess. Some of the best parts ("Hard At The Top" -- as in harder-at-the-bottom, see also Rancid Vat/Goddo/Keith Whitley/Jamey Johnson, the super heavy hookah pipe instrumental "The Turk An'Wot'E Smokes", closing ballad "Big Fire") remind me a lot of Mott the Hoople, circa Brain Capers; instrumental probably has some Pink Fairies in it, too. Some of the songs on Side One are a little too lackadaiscally post-Faces/proto-Black Crowes for my tastes, but "Crisis" on Side Two is another tough one, and "The Cops Are Coming" has the singer going into Bon Scott/Angry Anderson gasoline alley mode about fights in the street and rumbles between kids on Triumphs and Harleys and then, I guess, the attempted gang rape of an underaged girl. Which is pretty disturbing actually, but the police show up on time.

Capital City Rockets Capital City Rockets (Elekra 1973) Wrote on Buy That For A Dollar thread: "Allegedly proto-punky Midwesterners. Look like smartass tough guys in sports uniforms, a good sign. Pretty sure Rick Johnson liked them and Martin Popoff didn't." Actually, though, having listening to it a few times, I'd say it's most accurately classified as "Brownsville Station or Earthquake Lite" -- like it, but don't think it really lives up to the jocky purple-jersey-and-bruises cover photo; was hoping for something more muscular. Catchiest/most memorable song is the opener, "Ten Hole Dollars," about how the singer would give a tenner to spend an hour with whoever he's singing to. I'm still not really clear on why, but strangulation gets mentioned a couple times -- as does, for some reason, the requesting of certain specific capital letters, which sounds incongruously Sesame Street and I'm not sure what they're supposed to spell out, if anything. Couple cuts -- "Come Back Baby" and "Searchlight" especially I guess -- reach into hardish-boogie pub rock territory, Feelgood/Bishops almost. And the album's all fairly good-timey, just less rambunctious than I was hoping. (Actually, just noticed that they're all wearing roller skates on the back cover, too -- a' la a roller derby team.)

Just did a Google search; couldn't find the photo, but looks like Wounded Bird reissued the album on CD at some point.

(Various) W4 Homegrown (W4 c. 1978) from Dollar-Buy thread: "Total Holy Grail, and I didn't even know it, because I hadn't thought about it for over three decades. W4 is Detroit AOR station WWWW; this has legendary local wannabees and never-weres..."

Notable tracks:

BUZZTONES "Coathanger" -- Pretty good late '70s style Doobie Bros yacht-rock; pretty sure I remember this one from the radio.
TOBY REDD "To Be A Star" -- Heaviest metal doom on the album, though still in a commercial AOR context. Remember this one, too.
TED STRUNCK AND THE STRATTON-NELSON BAND "Someday Baby" -- Dorky white reggae, with drawling spacemen at the start and end (huh?)
GUARDIAN "Waiting" -- Best part is the proggy/Styxy synths at the start; after that, halfway decent Midwestern pomp-pop, I suppose.
ROMANTICS "Tell It To Carrie" -- Their first local hit. Pretty sure this is the original Bomp single mix from 1978; was remixed two years later for their debut album. Not going to say this version's better -- it's maybe kinda thin -- but it's quaint and charming.
NORTHWIND "Just Yesterday" - Passably forgettable jazz-rock, with saxamaphones. I like saxamaphones, so I don't mind.
ROCKETS "Lookin' For Love" -- Most organic sounding thing here, from presumably the biggest names at that point, though they didn't chart an album until 1979. And this sorta hefty but generic Foghat-style boogie is definitely no "Oh Well" or "Turn Up The Radio."
SCOTT CARLSON AND MIKE JOYCE "See Me Or See Me Gone" -- Like this a lot, despite the band's inability to come up with a name that makes them seem like a band. Good swooping late '70s-tunafish-period REO Speedwagon riverboat jamming. Another familiar one, I think.
BOB GOODSITE "Fly Away" -- Loud-guitared white blues, ho hum; George might like this one more than I do, unless he wouldn't.
WOLFTICKET "Rich Man" -- Passingly funky, passingly class-conscious soul-rock, with a horn section.

Most curious about Toby Redd, who I'm pretty sure passed as local homegrown stars on Detroit radio in those days. One MP3 link calls them "Detroit powerpop/new wave," hmmm, but the song is called "Can't Find a Job", always a promising title, especially in Detroit.

Liked the 1985 Some Like It Hot EP I picked up by Detroit indie-label AOR hacks Bittersweet Alley I picked up at End Of An Ear, too -- consistently catchy and crunchy early '80s Bryan Adams/Def Leppard type stuff, in loveably cheeseball hockey haircuts.

So here's the Toby Redd page from the Motor City Rock website:

http://www.motorcityrock.com/bands/toby_redd/toby_redd.html

And here's Bittersweet Alley:

http://www.motorcityrock.com/bands/bitter_sweet_alley/bitter_sweet_alley.html

Actually, I'm guessing the Romantics actually re-recorded "Tell It To Carrie" for their debut LP, more than just remixed it.

got another widowmaker album. not as good as the first one. got great records today. including sweet copy of witchfinder general's friends of hell. oh man too much to list now. got a great brumbeat 2xlp comp that chuck would like.

I'm not even sure what "brumbeat" is! Never heard of it before. Though if Scott said I'd like it, I'll take his word for it.

Anyway.

Rick Springfield Comic Book Heroes (Columbia 1973) Definitely agree way more with Scott (who on the Dollar Buy thread said he never really connected with more than a couple guitar tracks) on this one than whoever posts here as dlp9001 ("That Rick Springfield album is amazing, btw, and for the most part far, far better than Speak To The Sky. Last 3 tracks are nearly perfect. Best thing he ever did, as far as I know.") I can't follow the concept, and the music, for the most part, is just too fancy-pants for me, not rock enough. Decent melodies throughout, I guess, but not great ones. The one guitar solo I love is at the end of "Why Are You Waiting," probably the album's high point; other, wankier guitar solo that jumps out is at the end of the closer, "Do You Love Your Childen," but that song's too Jesus Christ Superstar-schlocked for me to like it unreservedly in the first place. The other to sort-of rockers I do like somewhat are "Misty Water Woman," a sort of slow stomping trudge that turns lush at the end of Side One, and "The Liar" at the start of Side Two, which is probably the manliest sounding thing on the album and for some reason probably erroneously always makes me think "Procol Harum" (who weren't really that manly, when you get down to it.) Otherwise, the title intro then "I'm Your Superman" are about superheroes, "Bad Boy" is about naughty boys and girls, and "Born Out Of Time" is about Celluloid heroines of the silver screen, all of which are well and good, but Rick doesn't really make me care about them. I mean, 1973's also the year that Goodbye Yellow Brick Road came out, and Elton did this same thing about a million times more memorably, I'd say.

Fireballet Two, Too... (Passport 1976) Another (even more -- a lot more) fancy-pants one that I wish rocked more and I really doubt I'll be playing much in the future. Paid half a buck for this since Scott raved about it on this board last year (not that I'm blaming him or anything!) And I get that it's kind of over-the-top in its prog-rock-without-the-rock complexity -- Jon Anderson-type falestto leads backed by piles of multi-layered windchime/churchbell vocal harmony parts, etc. And at least you can't accuse its cover of being misleading, given those five pirouetting guys wearing tutus. Just wish it didn't sound so much like it looks, maybe. Favorite track is probably "Chinatown Boulevards," where the changes get real twisted in the middle, and bolstered by guitar momentum. Wish that happened more often. Also could use more space robot parts. (There's a couple.) Don't mind the organ in "Montage En Filgree." Pretty sure they should have credited whatever classical composer they stole the end of "It's About Time" from though.

Brumbeat comp is a live double album comp of Birmingham/Midlands England pub rock circa 1980. not all great, but always interesting to hear what the non-punks were playing around town. bands include: bright eyes, the lazers, willy & the poorboys, the quads, rockers, speed limit, dansette damage, mayday, dangerous girls, the playthings, the thrillers, spoonfull, and eclipse. live at the barrel organ!

also got a 70's comp of "north-east" pub bands called All Together in connection with something called the Bedrock Festival. this one from 1977. this has a lot of the country-rock pub rock stuff on it. bands: southbound, kip, moonlight drive, scratchband, sidekick, michael fords limousine, young bucks, hot snax, east coast, steve brown band, junco partners.

All Together is 100% punk and new wave free.

Listening to Marino II by Marino. Japanese hard rock from the 80's. don't know if they actually named themselves after Frank Marino, but its very possible. pretty good too. got a bunch of Japanese metal/hard rock in. well, not a bunch. but some. stuff that never got released over here. one band called Christ does a pretty good Guns 'n' Roses thing. i dig that one.

okay, apparently Roadrunner put out Marino II too, but maybe only in Europe. I certainly don't remember them.

Did you get into anything by 44 magnum, Scott? Early 80s Japanese hard rock. I remember Street Rock 'n Roller being a lot of fun.

i did! got their Danger album and something else by them.

The Ted Nugent Constitution and an appearance on CNN in which he serves up his usual poor man's Ayn Rand:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/06/the-ted-nugent-constitution/

Vandenberg Vandenberg (Atco 1982) Wouldn't give this a 10 out of 10 like Popoff did, but I do like it a lot. Just super listenable, super melodic NWOBHM-style early '80s metal (from Holland, actually) -- prettier and more AOR-pomped on Side One (which includes two alleged small-hit ballads I've never heard before), faster and more OTT doubletime-drummed on Side Two, from four dudes who look really friendy and silly on the back cover. Popoff seems to hear a sense of humor in the music somewhere, too; he compares them to Van Halen (similar logos too supposedly?), but I'd say they'd be closer to Van Hagar, if Van Hagar were actually any good. Anyway, meat-and-potatoes Paul Rodgers gutbust that manages to soar with the opera-metal eagles but never overdoes the operatics, sexist-pig machismo that manages to come off really taseteful, guitar hero stuff that never turns into masturbation or loses track of the tune. Favorites are probably the speediest ones, "Ready For You" and "Out In The Streets" at the bookends of Side Two, where all us boys get together and pillage the town as a metaphor for putting on a rock'n'roll show, but I enjoy it all the way through every time I play it. Still expect I'll confuse it with the 1997 self-titled Metal Blade album by the band Vanderhoof (also named for their hotshit guitarist), which seemed tasty in lots of the same ways, though I've only got that one on CD. (I guess Vanderhoof had a keyboard player, though. Think they were maybe from Washington state, and associated somehow with Metal Church?)

Actually, Vanderhoof were Nuclear Blast, not Metal Blade. (I have the CD here, but haven't played it in a while. Also have a vague memory that it was some kind of reunion deal, from a band I'd otherwise never heard of, but could be totally wrong about that.)

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

Been reacquainting with The Tourists first two albums, s/t and Luminous Basement. Had been a fan, bought in the Northampton punk rock store between 79-80. Then they were thrown out by crazy mom before I could have them shipped to CA. Anyway, was surprised to find how much they were full of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers big jangle. All songs written by Peet Coombs, the guitarist, not Annie Lennox or Dave Stewart.

Like the debut marginally more. It's real good with a high point being "Loneliest Man in the World," of which a great TOTP vid exists on YouTube. Lennox in a white mac channeling the very Euro Bowie/Ziggy thing. "Save Me," a less then 2-minute tune sounds like Dylan fronting the Heartbreakers. I also hear some early Who veneration on the LP.

LM is slightly harder and darker. "Let's Take a Walk" from it is a great Music Machine cop but overall the tunes aren't quite as memorable. "Round Round Blues" is more Heartbreakers and all this happened when they could have been listening to Petty's first three records including Damn the Torpedoes.

Their biggest single was "I Only Want to Be With You" which may have netted them some play in the US. The vid is very New Wave. It's not on either of these, winding up on a comp album which I believe was their only US domestic release. I don't recall these other two on a US label.

Hard to imagine they didn't actually catch. Or maybe not. For Eurythmics there was probably the realization that Annie Lennox had to be the only focus which The Tourists image only diluted.

I dunno. The songwriting was top notch and the archival material on YT from the Old Grey Whistle Test was neat.

i swear i won't go youtube crazy, but i was just playing this and reminded of my love for it. its honestly one of my favorite tracks. if i had a list of favorite songs it would be on there. this version. though i love the original too. this clip includes the long-ass intro which is pretty cool (the whole first side of the album is a continuous mix. each song goes into the next). the solo at about 3:30 into the clip never ever gets old for me! i've played this song and this album a zillion times. i know for a fact i've played this track at least a hundred times. some things just become addictive to me. the whole album is good, but this takes the cake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRG3GR6bkE

needless to say it sounds WORLDS better on vinyl on a stereo. really really loud.

xp Actually turns out Popoff doesn't really say Vandenberg have early Van Halen's sense of humor, per se'; he refers to "slowish Van Halen camp pieces," which for all know might mean "camp" as in "campfire" as much as, uh, Susan Sontag's Notes On Camp or whatever. And my Van Hagar point was just that the singer has more Sammy Hagar (c. Montrose, but still) than David Lee Roth in him. Doubt Van Hagar ever had the finesse or the energy of these Vandenberg guys (but then, I haven't listened to Van Hagar in decades.)

Otherwise:

Pet Hate Bad Publicity (Heavy Metal Records 1984) Wrote on Buy For Dollar thread: "Cover looks more punk than metal, despite (Wolverhampton UK-based) label, though LPs on their disheveled hotel room floor by Angel, Kiss, and Japan could swing either way. Again, never heard of 'em. Popoff gives it just 4 out of 10, but calls them NWOBHM and compares them to Hanoi Rocks, which makes sense." But now, having played the record a bunch of times, I'm not hearing either NWOBHM or Hanoi Rocks very much. Their great stuff, all on the first side ("Girls Grow Up To Fast," "Cry Of The Wild," "She's Got Action," separated by a pretty good and totally appropriate "Street Fighting Man" cover) makes me think a lot of Boomtown Rats halfway between first and second albums -- or at least the tunemanship and songwriting does, all about the mundane but profound trials and tribulations of regular kids in sleepy British suburbs sneaking out past their parents at night to hook up and get in trouble and so on. "Wreck The Radio" and "Dancing On My Heart" on Side Two sound like intentionally numbskulled pop-metal attempts to get on MTV or whatever the U.K. equivalent was at the time; they may actually be the most "metal" things on the album, too. And it took me a while to figure out who most of the rest reminded me of, but then I realized it was another one-album band -- post-hair-metal glam-rockers Electric Angels, whose self-titled 1990 Atlantic record I loved enough at the time to place it #32 (!?) in Stairway To Hell. Pet Hate sound a lot like those guys -- though maybe not like the best songs by them. Still will probably inspire me to play my Electric Angels cassette sometime soon. (And Electric Angels had some Hanoi Rocks in their genes, I guess, so maybe that comparison makes sense after all.)

"Girls Grow Up To Fast" is not a song about dieting, for what it's worth. (Actually, it's called "Girls Grow Up Too Fast.")

Ha, Ira Robbins in The New Trouser Press Record Guide, 1985: "The Tourists were remarkably low on vitality or originality, playing instead a redundant rehash of '60s American acid and folk-rock...Lennox here sings with strength but no character; duets with Pete Coombs resemble the worst of Jefferson Airplane. Otherwise the group recalls It's A Beautiful Day, the Byrds, the Mamas and Papas, the Who and others." Actually sounds like I might like them more than I ever liked the Eurythmics. (The book says the s/t debut never came out in the U.S., btw, but 1979's Reality Effect and 1980's Luminous Basement both did, on Epic.)

Ira Robbins of Trouser Press was bona fide application of 180 degree rule in rock criticism. I despised everything he liked at Trouser Press and vice versa. You listen to "Loneliest Man in the World" on TOPTP via YouTube and tell me that has no character or is even remotely like Jefferson Airplane or It's Beautiful Day. The Wiki bio, which quotes from a lot of other places, mentions they were slagged because of their proximity to punk rock which I'd guess to be accurate considering they were out in '79.

I do like them way more than the Eurythmics. But the latter was never my type of act. You can review the stuff on YouTube. My estimation is you'd like it. The first album is great. The only knock might be was Coombs was nondescript next to Lennox. However, he wrote the songs and they were good ones. I had all three albums originally, the UK copies of the two mentioned.

I don't recall a lot about Reality Effect except for the single and the impression that it was a fix up of the other two, meaning it had a few new songs and mostly redos and remixes/republishes from the other two albums. Eurythmics wasn't a guitar band. The Tourists were with Annie Lennox occasionally providing ? & the Mysterians farfisa organ lines. She never overdid it and it always worked with the heavier guitars, definitely giving those songs a new wave flair.

Skin Yard Skin Yard (C/Z 1986) I honestly hoped to like this -- The Creem Metal review I wrote when it first came out, wherein I correctly (jokingly) predicted that in a few years loud rock music from Seattle would be all over MTV, is going to be included in my anthology book. Hadn't listened in 25 years, until I found a copy for 50 cents. But I didn't even like it much back in 1986, and I was right. The one cut I do like, "Scratch" starting Side Two, is both the only instrumental and only song where the band gives their would-be Crimson-metal fusion changes much punch -- or at least the only one where you can hear them do it, since in all the rest the spotlight is on Ben McMillan's third-rate Jim Morrison poetry schtick. He's better crooning than howling, but not much better. Mostly, he unpalatably anticipates Alice In Chains. The picture of him on the back cover, trying to look all disturbing in some stupid mask, is a clue to his thespian tendencies. Hope the sperm-white vinyl sells for something.

RIP Phil Kennemore from Y&T. Shame they turned into a soft rock clone band, but Earthshaker and Black Tiger still rock pretty hard.

http://www.meniketti.com/

RIP. If I had made a Top 10 list of albums I first heard in 2010, that self-titled Yesterday & Today debut from 1976 would have been on there for sure. (We talked about it some on last year's Rolling Past Expiry thread.)

it's a very cool record. r.i.p.

i can't believe i have to be the one to say nice things about the eurythmics on this thread! eurythmics were WAY better than the tourists. not that i've heard the tourists in 20 years - and i recall liking them - but, man, early eurythmics is all kind of cool. and i like the later stuff too. can understand gorge not having anything good to say about them though. not his kinda thing. and the eurythmics did actually add more guitars as time went on. just saying. plus, first eurythmics album is total krautrock weirdness. and half of Can is on it. and clem burke. and robert gorl from DAF.

RIP. Lung cancer, argh!

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/07/everyone-a-wuss-except-ted-nugent/

I'd say bookmark the blog. This one seems a response to Roseanne Barr being disagreeable with him on CNN this week, his thesis that the problem of the economy is caused by lazy people, Ted code for non-whites.

Nothing to say, nowhere to go:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/11/nugent-recommends-being-prepared-for-evil/

From one of the "I have never heard (fill in the letter) ... " threads a way back

Little Bob Story -- French New Wavey, punk-like rockabilly band. Popoff ridiculed them in one of his books.

I was off. Have an EP, now had time to listen to their first two LP, High Tide from '76, and Off the Rails from '77.

Frenchmen gone to England, landing squarely in the scrappy pub rock scene. There's definitely some Dr. Feelgood love here but, most of all, they sound mostly like the Count Bishops. Both albums are good niche listens, nothing slow about them. All featuring the tough stripped rock and roll sound that was on the pub rock bands which wound up on Stiff and Chiswick records. Off the Rails was produced by Sean Tyla so they were probably drawing a lot from Ducks Deluxe, too.

Left out of lots of books on hard rock, I reckon, almost exclusively because they were French. Telephone is still my fave French hard rock and roll act. But this, while not sounding like Telephone at all, does squarely rock. Garage rock fans would like them, too.

Um, oops -- Little Bob Story's High Time, instead of 'tide.'

Since produced by Sean Tyla went and dug up Ducks Deluxe. Two albums, 74 and 75, s/t and Taxi to the Terminal Zone.

Mixed bag -- the fast rock and roll is good. Less impressive is the country rock -- all of which sounds well meant and sweet but which just doesn't stick in the head. Tyle, I'm guessing it's his voice, for the rock numbers veers between poor man's Howlin' Wolf and Bob Dylan, the latter particularly with respect to the cadences. Did the same in Tyla Gang but there's nothing on these quite as good as "Styrofoam."

Best cuts -- "Coast to Coast," "Nervous Breakdown," -- a cover, "Don't Mind Rockin' Tonight," "Fireball," Covers include "It's All Over Now" and the Groovies' "Teenage Head" which is just OK.

Tyla wrote "Who Put the Bomp?" which seemed to have inspired Bomp magazine? Kind of a garagey swamp-rock tune.

Surprisingly, liked more of Little Bob Story's records than these.

It's official. MSNBC just declared that among the celebrities who had their signs change -- Ted Nugent is now an Ophiucus -- the new sign caused by shift of the Earth's magnetic pole and consequent readjustment of the astrological zodiac.

Which, if you look at it squinty-eyed, reads "O Fuck Us." BTW, anyone here ever read the old sci-fi novel, "The Ophiuchi Hotline"?

Back to his weekly rant, no surrender, escalate now etc:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/14/same-old-nugent/

Will post on Tyla Gang's Blow You Out and the first Nick Gilder album, both surprisingly fine, a bit later.

Tyla Gang's Blow You Out is material from before the Beserkely contract that resulted in Yachtless and [/i]Moonproof[/i].

It's a combination of the single made for Stiff and things records for SkyDog, a French label -- that country being where they were most popular.

Lots tougher than Duck Deluxe. The closest comparison is Mott the Hoople, sans the production of their Epic records. Has a grubby feel like Brain Capers and Tyla has the same way of being the poor man's Bob Dylan over the hard rock as Ian Hunter.

Tyla and the band like the word 'boogie' a lot but don't sound at all like the only other Brit band that threw the same around at the time -- Status Quo.

"Cannons of the Boogie Nights" -- parts 1 and 2, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Boogie," "Paris Boogie."

"Whizz Kids" and "Suicide Jockey" are decent pastiches of Mott the Hoople-isms. "Styrofoam" is on here, the high point. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Boogie" is also good to great, actually sounding like they're from Texas. Solid and raw mid-70's hard rock, not a slow tune or a crooner in the bunch. Lots of thud, would appeal to Deviants and Pink Fairies fans.

Nick Gilder's You Know Who You Are" from '77 surprised me in how good a glitter rock record it is. It's as good as Sweet's [i]Give Us a Wink, easy, maybe not the earlier stuff, though.

I'd checked in with the album that spawned "Hot Child in the City," his US hit, but never really cared for it.

This works better. Lots of crunchy guitars with that girl voice. Christ, he sounds exactly like a girl. Which probably explains why it stiffed.

"Rated X" from this was covered by Pat Benatar for her first album. This version is a bit more effective. If you heard the latter first you'd think it's a girl imitating Pat Benatar's tune.
Which is a compliment, I suppose.

"Amanda Greer," "Tantalize," "Backstreet Noize" -- it's all Rodney Bingenheimer Hollywood & Sunset bait. Probably a little too late. Despite the fact it rocks and the guitar lines are hard and totally apt with the singing, you'd have never been able to sell this anywhere but Hollywood in '77. It needed a single breakout for really young kids and girls. "Hot Child In the City" really wasn't that, either.

Makes me curious about Rock America, his third.

Don't think I ever heard Rock America, but I like You Know Who You Are a lot. (Probably also like City Nights more than George does.) Last time I played the debut, I marked "Backstreet Noise," "Roxy Roller," and "Rated X" (the second of which I also have as a great single from I think '75 by Gilder's band Sweeney Todd with Bryan "Guy" Adams), with "All Across The Nation (The Wheels Are Rolling)" as fourth-best, but I should play it again soon and see if my mind's changed. Oddly, "Backstreet Noise" isn't included on The Best Of Nick Gilder: Hot Child In The City, the 12-cut CD comp that Razor & Tie put out in 2001. But it ends with three cuts from the third album Frequency, so I should spin those soon, too. (How big was he in Canada, I wonder? Bigger than the one-hit wonder he was in the States at least, I bet. Kind of assumed that he at least halfway inspired the glammier side of fellow Vancouver bands like Streetheart and early Loverboy, but maybe that's all just my imagination.) (Actually, turns out he had two other songs hit the Hot 100 in the States after "Hot Child" went #1 -- "Here Comes The Night" #44, then "Rock Me" #57.)

Also, liner notes to the CD best-of say he wrote "The Warrior" for Scandal, which had slipped my mind, assuming I ever knew it in the first place (also "You Know We're Gonna Get Hurt" by Joe Cocker, whatever that is.)

RockAmerica -- 1980 -- on Casablanca (label switch) doesn't live up to its title. Big change from the debut reflecting the production idea that guitars were going out and polyphonic synths were in. His voice is also not so twee. Title cut sounds like the Cars, mostly. Also some Gary Numan creeping into the cut. In fact the first three tunes do. "I've Got Your Number" is even more Cars-y, straight imitation of Ric Ocasek, opening line echos "You Might Think I'm Crazy" which it may predate. Almost letter perfect Cars cop, in fact. Then we have "20th Century Girls" and more Ric Ocasek and also heading deep into the Eighties MTV video AOR vaguely New Wave-y with big poofy hair girl in the video for attracting the bids as brat pack movie music tuneage. Late period Shooting Star -- could be predating Streetheart, but haven't heard the latter. Also lots more into the more middling Pat Benatar album vibes -- Patty Smyth and Scandal, not "Goodbye to You", but "The Warrior" album, which after the famous single wasn't great. Uses the Eighties trick of dressing up reggae beats with shiny electrics to make them sound rock-ish, which I basically detested. "On the Beat" the only thing that brings to mind the first album's glitter rock tenor but with the Eighties affect on top of it. It's still a good tune -- definitely something xhuxk would like. "Lady You're a Killer" also in the same vein.

Overall, a bit professionally grasping at what was the pop tone in the sales from the time. The Cars, I suppose, and everyone that decided to make their records sound whole hog AOR.

For me it's a C+, or very generously a B- except for "On the Beat" and "I've Got Your Number."

And the Ducks Deluxe records really fade except for a few of the rock and roll tunes. While they may have greatly influenced other pub rock groups I like it's too Brinsley Schwarz or a very poor man's The Band or something for me.

Just in time --

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/15/ted-and-mlk/

Question: I interviewed Jus Oborn from Electric Wizard last week, and he said he's been listening to a lot of Pretty Things and their pseudonymous material as Electric Banana. Do I need to bother digging that stuff up? I've never heard the Pretty Things at all, so should I start there, or skip entirely?

they were one of the greatest rock & roll bands of the 60's. so, i would say, yeah, you should check them out. but only if you want to.

Pretty Things were great. But their stuff does vary a bit. You might prefer Parachute to start off with than say SF Sorrow which is one of the best albums of the 60s but very psychpop/rock opera.

Is the nuge insane then or what? I love your updates on him george, i dont think he will be calming down his rhetoric somehow. Happy new year to you all btw!

they were one of the greatest rock & roll bands of the 60's.

But were they a 60s band, or a 70s band arrived early? I really don't like much rock music from 1964-1969. Psychedelia doesn't do shit for me. So if they sound like the Who or the Kinks or bands like that, I'm not gonna be interested. If they sound like the Stooges or Grand Funk Railroad or (maybe) the MC5, I might enjoy them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NjFgzWwll8&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4zKTZbptAQ&feature=related

they were lots of things. they could be the who and the stooges and the kinks and the mc5 and psychedelic and all kinds of things. cuz they were great. so sad that psychedelia doesn't do anything for you. you are missing so much great music.

they were a harder rock band in the 70s than they were in the 60s. Definitely start with Parachute and onwards if you hate psych or rolling stones(hah) type rnb ..

so sad that psychedelia doesn't do anything for you. you are missing so much great music.

Believe me, I've tried. But all that ball-less English fop-psych stuff from '65-68 just drives me up a fucking wall. Pink Floyd's first good idea was kicking Syd Barrett out of the band. Jimi Hendrix managed to keep his Englishmen under control, but letting whatsisface sing on Electric Ladyland created one of the worst speedbumps of all time. There's certain types of psychedelic rock that work for me - the more garage/greaser stuff from L.A. and the Southwest and a few other parts of America. But the whole UK frilly-shirt scene can fuck right off.

yeah there is so much more to psych than the fairytale stuff.

I'm not a huge frilly-shirt cups-and-cakes fan myself, to be honest. But Scott's right -- that's a pretty limiting definition of psych. And either way, there's nothing frilly about the Pretty Things' "Midnight To Six Man" or especially "Come See Me" to my ears. That's stuff's punk rock! (You know, like Downliners Sect. Or Shadows Of Knight.)

haha, its funny that i'm so used to phil that this doesn't even make me blink:

"I really don't like much rock music from 1964-1969"

It's not hyperbole, though. Almost everything I really love as far as old rock is from 69-75.

xp Then again, the only Pretty Things albums I've ever seen fit to keep in my collection are CD reissues of their first two, the self-titled one and Get The Picture, both from 1965. And I do remember being stumped and mostly bored by S.F. Sorrow last time I tried it. I don't really know their '70s stuff at all. (But oddly enough, I thought Balboa Island from 2007 wasn't bad, when it came out.)

stumped and bored by s.f. sorrow makes me sad and want to cry. what am i gonna do with you two?

now all i need is gorge to show up and say the pretty things sucked until they put out silk torpedo and savage eye.

nevermind scott i still dig s.f. sorrow

Is the nuge insane then or what?

No. But he's lucked into a minor career as a shoeshine boy who can be counted on for his incivility, namecalling, only slightly veiled calls for violence and parroting of the cant from those much more famous than him.

now all i need is gorge to show up and say the pretty things sucked until they put out silk torpedo and savage eye.

Haw. Nah. I have a Pretty Things box anthology. I did (and still do) like Savage Eye for "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" which got a lot of airplay on MMR when I was in school in Pennsy.

Re Nuge -- the quotes in my last blog post on him were taken from a long interview he did with Alex Jones.

This describes the nature of that show:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-13/zeitgeist-the-documentary-that-may-have-shaped-jared-loughners-worldview/full/

You see, Nugent winds up getting on CNN, portrayed as just a colorful and interesting guy. And when he did his firetraps, casinos and ag fairs tour during the summer, music journalists gave him a free ride for the same reason. Pointedly, almost all of them either don't know what he's up to when he doesn't have the make-up on for them or choose not to pay attention to it. So most people don't know how screwed up he sounds when he's riffing with someone like Alex Jones, who is always preaching insurrection and various conspiracy theories which have no basis in fact.

Shooter Jennings buys into that rubbish, too. Somehow he got Stephen King to go along with him for an album which dabbled in this. xhuxk could inform better but it was my impression it was a horrendous flop.

Unperson, when are you going to let us in on what you think of the BOC discs you recently bought? I'm curious.

Overall they're good stuff, but I'm not hearing that many fantastic songs that I didn't already know via Workshop of the Telescopes.

Of possible interest to thread denizens: apparently Don Kirshner (of "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert") has died.

"This is Don Kirshner
And tonight on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert
A new phenomenon in the music world
With six million albums to his credit in just two short years
My good friend, here's Johnny."

RIP.

Yeah, definitely of interest. Saw Uriah Heep, Slade, Sparks, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Black Oak Arkansas, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a few others. Remember being pissed that I missed UFO.

Capital City Rockets Capital City Rockets (Elekra 1973)

Chuck, you were aware that theze guyz became the Godz, weren't you? (Or at least one or two of 'em did.)

Eric Moore, the bass player, I think. And a guitarist, Bob Hill. On YouTube someone has posted a couple cuts. To my ear he's obviously singing on one of them -- a song which really could have come off the second Godz album, Nothing is Sacred. Which is to say they were toned down Godz-y. You can find the CC Rockets vinyl to mp3 on one of the ocean of music blogs.

Never Mind the Bullets Here's Early Bob Seger

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2010/TmV2ZXIgTWluZCB0aGUgQnVsbGV0cyBIZXJlJ3MgRWFybHkgQm9iIFNlZ2Vy/

Pretty neat it got shoved up to 111th. Three first place votes with the full load.

we did what we could. its in god's hands now.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Thanks guys! You've made my mother proud if nothing else.

Guessing that 21 votes-per-voter must be the highest ratio of any album in the P&J Top 200. (Glenn McDonald created a "Enthusiasm Ranking," and I didn't see it on there -- Agalloch finished first with a mere 14.something I think; the page kind of froze up on me -- but maybe a minimum # of voters were required, I'm not sure. Of course, it's also possible that I don't understand Glenn's math.)

Glenn's enthusiasm ranking required a 10 vote minimum.

Yeah, I just found that: "Enthusiasm" divides points by votes (for things with at least 10 votes) Ah, well.

We produced a well deserved statistical bump, or a friendly noticeable nudge, if you prefer.

Considering the number of critics now included in the poll and the atomization of tastes, that's what you have to do. Don't try to ascribe science where there is none.

I look at it as boosting the signal above the noise. It's a shame someone like Bob Seger is too old and fossilized, along with his help, to understand a gift when it's shoved at him. Didn't help that the UK article on this sort of neglected to actually name the thing and describe the nature of it and where it came from too closely. Details would have detracted from the genius of the columnist.

If i voted, I would have voted for the Seger disc. So goddamn good.

Proven by science, after a decent absence from the critics poll, I still have the old completely non-centric mojo:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&thread=%406464&typeId=9149585060559937602&render=List

Relistening to Skyhooks albums. Previously had relied upon a 2-CD anthology which, in retrospect, is shabby.

Had this to say in olden days:

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.

I'll make a coinage for Seventies/Eighties hard rock, usually be foreigners or Canadians, that flopped for reasons having to do with look and tone right out of the gate:

TFF, for Taken For Fags.

Which probably still rules in many places. And is totally hegemonic in country music.

And Nick Gilder certainly fits TFF with only "Hot Child in the City" squeaking through as a bubblegum glam one off hit.

Ego is Not a Dirty Word has my favorites Skyhooks tune, still "Mercedes Ladies," which is very gay -- but not like homo -- as the bandmembers of Lesion used to sing.

Singing about looking good in her Levis suit, strutting down Collins Street -- the ritzy shopping district in Melbourne. "You look so shmug on your Persian rug ..."

Singer Shirl Strachan way too twee, but amazing, for US ears. Plus at a time the glam rockers were turning up the voltage and increasing the weight of the amps, Skyhooks had a lighter sound, much more rooted in a bouncing Fender guitar tone, a lot of the time doing country licks filtered through the Oz-ness.

"Smartarse Songwriters" too smartarse for US sense of humor. "Horror Movie" about the evening news. "You Just Like Me Cuz I'm Good in Bed" has girlfriend telling her boyfriend, I think, that he only wants her because she gives him head.

Straight in a Gay Gay World was the next one, the guitar's get a little louder, only a little. Everything stays idiosyncratic, acerbic and fun -- maybe the songwriting drops off a bit although "Living in the 70's" -- from their first album, is on this copy of mine. "Million Dollar Riff" -- cool. "Blue Jeans" is neato country rockabilly. "This Is My City" -- an anthem on how you have to gag and make like you think everyplace native you're playing is wonderful. "If you don't like it, you got to bite it ..." which what -I think- they're going on about. Then it switches to fighting the cops, who when they tell you to get out of town, you got to stick around.

"Somewhere in Sydney" is more hard bopping country rock. The title cut is the hardest and heaviest, a languorous slink which may be a reflection on being TFF & having to do with their image.

Guilty Until Proven Insane makes the guitars louder, the band heavier. And the songwriting starts to lose some of its former charm. Has something Iron Maiden covered, "Women in Uniform," which is cool. As is the arena heartland spoof -- "Bbbbboogie." "Life in the Modern World" is thud rock with screaming guitar. "Why Dontcha All Get Fucked," a boogie with an obvious sing-a-long crowd pleaser of a line.

I'd rate them in descending order:

Ego -- A
Straight -- B
Guilty -- B-

Finally played Gilder's You Know Who You Are today, decided I like "Runaways In The Night" and "Tantalize" almost as much as "Backstreet Noise" and "Roxy Roller" and "Rated X" (and actually, turns out I'd marked those first two titles as such on the label in pencil a few years back; just didn't notice it a few days ago when I checked the cover. So my opinion hasn't changed much over the years, apparently.) Figured out the high girly screams of "Roxy!" in "Roxy Roller" are a total Sweet rip, but "Tantalize" reminds me more of the harder side of Sparks. And man, glam guys always sure liked singing about underaged runaways on the street being groupies out at rock clubs and doing porn or whatever -- '70s glitter bands did it, hair-metal bands in the '80s still did it.

Btw, since George asked above -- yeah, Shooter Jennings' album last year went nowhere. Last I heard while half paying attention, I think he was offering a free live album (presumably back to his outlaw country roots, I didn't check) on his website. Time will tell if he'll ever dive back into all that Alex Jones/Ron Paul/Jared Loughner gold-standard illuminati conspiracy nutjobbery again.

I've never thought to look for Skyhooks vids before this thread. (No idea WHY they would be "TFF" haha...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMc3v6HTXs&feature=related

Rocking Nutz's '77 Hard Nutz again this morning. Love this album so much; need to hear their other ones someday. "Wallbanger" is still the killer cut, but "I Know The Feeling," "Down On My Knees," whole thing really bangs on walls. Hadn't noticed before how late '60s garage-evolving-into-psych the opener "Seeing Is Believing" sounds. Otherwise, here's what I wrote two years ago:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

I mean, I do see George (and sort of Dan Peterson)'s point about most of their songs not being super-hooky or absolutely indelible, and about the singer not being real distinctive. But dang do they ever sound good when they're on.

Tell me what you think of this one just before they changed the name to Rage. I always liked it muchly. Sort of like Praying Mantis's Captured City, (also on this comp) a tune which was so much better than everything else they did the instant you bought an album -- letdown.

If they'd had that consistent sound over the course of their albums ... Anyway, still like
the first album, probably more than Hard Nutz. Will have to listen again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clgeZNPs2D8

Dug up Nutz' Live Cutz, the band's last to see if a live recording did more justice to the studio renditions.

Yes, it does -- in spades. There's a bit of hard-rocking prog mixed in with the boogie. The singer screams and guitars bludgeons when it needs to. "Seeing is Believing" was one of the good cuts I remember from "Hard Nutz". It's even better here. "You Better Watch Out" is fantastic for about a minute a half until a four minute drum solo derails it. "RSD" predates Bon Jovi's thing with country outlaw and love song metaphor and pop metal except the singer doesn't sound anything like BJ. However, the pre-Richie Sambora guitar solo is intact. Which isn't to say this sounds polished. Not at all. It's grubby and in a small venue where only the hardcore are in attendance. "Joke" is probably where the Head East comparisons come from. It was on the first album, here benefiting from being more desperate sounding. "Wallbanger" turns into a fast extended nine-minute jam. Bits of it -- not the double-time boogie parts -- sound like raw Yes from Yessongs. And the last song shows why some of the kids from the NWOBHM went for them. It's ye old denim & leather soaked at the pub cuz it's raining beer metal.

i love the japanese. who else would take the time to do it right?

http://cgi.ebay.com/MANTICORE-ROCK-BOX-Japan-6-mini-lp-STRAY-DOG-THEE-IMAGE-/120611785009?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1505c931

i actually need a copy of inside the triangle. and that second hanson album. i'll find them cheap eventually. love that first thee image album. love both stray dog albums. talked about that first hanson album on here.

what a package! just the idea of a boxed set with those six album inside! kinda beautiful.

japan one of the only countries that figured out how to make the CD cool. they were always good at packaging over there.

Yes, I don't have a load of Japanese CD reissues but those I have are great. All my favorite Yes
records. Suzi Quatro's first two albums. And a bunch of Free. And Japanese versions of the UFO catalog.

The Weekly Nugent:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/25/nugent-copy-editor-defeated/

when i play club ninja, do i think its somehow gonna transform itself into a better record? why do i keep trying? maybe if i play one track at a time over and over and really focus and squint my eyes i will hear something that i've missed before? ain't gonna happen. but my love for the band makes me plug away like an idiot, i guess.

I went to a passover seder with eric bloom & his wife on 4/6/74. Though they probably weren't married yet. Had to bargain with my parents to have seder at my buddy bobby's house (bobby being eric's nephew), and not with my own family, because bobby & i had tickets to see renaissance & elo at the westbury music fair that night.

That was the night of the famous "Good kugel, Joan" incident. Kugel being a type of potato pudding. "Good kugel, Joan" being eric's compliment to his sister (bobby's mother). Not something i ever imagined a rock star saying, i later commented to bobby. Which somehow got back around to eric, because months later, when sitting on the new sofa in bobby's folks' living room, eric said "Good cushions, Joan" & pointedly looked over at me.

Now I learn that eric's wife is howard stern's cousin, hence stern's appearance on club ninja.

bobby's mother was also related to novelist stanley elkin. uncle stanley. she'd never read his books.

Eric upon hearing that bobby and i were seeing renaissance & elo: "She has a pretty voice."

that's a pretty awesome story, ha ha.

Haven't heard Club Ninja as a whole, but "Perfect Water" is pretty phenomenal.

This thread got me googling for info on Nutz, which led me to this AMAZING story about Steve Drake, a 70s rock star wannabe who released albums singing over recordings by other bands.

http://lysergia_2.tripod.com/LamaWorkshop/Kacz/lamaKacz.htm

That's fairly awesome considering we've discussed No Dice, BeBop Deluxe, Nutz and Babe Ruth on here from time to time.

Ripping off Babe Ruth's "Duchess of Orleans" here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxum9ClYo-c&feature=related

I can't tell if maybe he added a faint vocal to the beginning, but the rest is 100% Babe Ruth.

i can't remember where i first read about steve drake. it was in some magazine or zine. can't imagine paying a hundred bucks for one of those records, but that's what they sell for.

oh right duh ugly things. sez so right at the top of the online thing.

Since Steve Drake ripped off Nutz' "Nature Intended," run don't walk to YouTube to see the band's version on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

so i got this early 80's album by The Dirty Strangers - who i had never heard of - and they are totally Stones-y with the singer doing his best Jagger. Which is fine, but the weird part is Keith Richards and Ron Wood are ALL over the album! on THRILL records! you learn something new every day.

i got an Inmates album from 1989. who the hell even knew that the Inmates were still a band in 1989? on the excellent Sonet label. sounds great.

wowee zoweeeeeeeee a funky-ass john wetton album! sweet!

http://bp0.blogger.com/_z9OnSxr2OHU/R8BHrm5c4uI/AAAAAAAAAAw/IEMtZ7beWAw/s320/jack-knife_small.jpg

okay, fine, it's not ALL funky, but the title-track - "I Wish You Would" - sure is and there are choice beats and basslines throughout.

Got the first Starcastle album, which I used to have. My favorite thing about it is some of the instrumental parts with, I'm assuming, the Moog? That synthesizer with the portamento sound that's on there. A lot of those ensemble parts are just great; they sound like, I don't know, library music or something.

got an album by Sweet F.A. it's from 1980. NOT the glam band. and NOT Fanny Adams. and NOT the album by Love & Rockets. this is a British band with Carol Grimes singing. I actually like two of her albums from the 70's and i should post about them on that Barefoot Jerry thread. cuz those guys are all over them. and so is ron cornelius and i REALLY want his solo album. but that's another story. the Sweet F.A. album is on the Swedish label Musiknatet Waxholm. and the inner sleeve has a long list and pictures of albums on the label. and, man, it just kinda bummed me out. or inspired me to live a long time. one or the other. i haven't heard a single album on it. Swedish prog and psych and rock..sheesh. Kung Tung! Hoola Bandoola Band! Samla Mammas Manna!

i'll get to them someday...

Hah -- Starcastle. First album pretty much got by on "Lady of the Lake," the setpiece that sounds like Yes. It's decent. That made two bands that tried sounding like Yes. Them, and earlier, Flash -- which featured the guitarist Yes tossed, Peter Banks, with the guitar taking over all the progressive parts.

Anyway, the distinctive sound on "Lady of the Lake" is still the monophonic synth.

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=monophonic+synth&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

Much like the Rick Wakeman use with a very little bit of Keith Emerson tossed in.

I'm not a synth expert but these are not the sounds that came in with polyphonic models all over cheesy stuff by the Eighties.

I wrote about Starcastle's first album (among other Midwestern proggish stuff) just last year, here:

http://www.emusic.com/features/spotlight/2010_201007-essay-prog.html

the guitars remain mostly frictionless

Yeah, you know, I was going to mention how much I like some of the clean distortion in the guitar - the lead part with the flanger on "Lady of the Lake," for example. Listening more, now, though, I'm also impressed by the entirely clean (no distortion) tone that's a bigger part of their basic sound. And the playing, too. Two guitar players, and a big part of their thing seems to have been playing with the same exact tone or the same effect at the same time. Really supportive parts, given the big role of both the bass and the keyboards in their songs.

Pretty impressive stuff.

Ted satire:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/26/chainsaw-rally/

Anybody heard these new "Bang" reissues? What is the band like? I just read an article about them, sounds interesting.

Go for the first Bang album. It's the best of the bunch. Second is so-so. Third is for avoidance.

love the first bang.

speaking of tasty solos, was listening to two noel redding band albums last night - blowin' and clonakilty cowboys - and man oh man the tone and shape and everything about the solos on those records, mmmm mmmm good.

Thanks fellas

Wait, so who's reissuing the Bang LPs this time? On CD, or what? Think I mentioned here not too long ago that my copy of the debut (which is indeed great -- "Lions and Christians"!) on my shelf these days is a numbered, presumably limited edition picture-disc vinyl reissue from the mid '00s or so on Outlaw Recordings out of NY; had stupidly purged my O.G. LP after writing my metal book. Used to own one of the two later ones, too -- I'm not positive which; the second, I think -- but it never did much for me.

As for Starcastle, I'm fairly sure I meant "frictionless" as a pejorative, a complaint. But if Tim prefers his guitars that clean, coolio...

Anyhow, now, time to catch up here on some past expiry listening from the past few weeks, during which time one ancient laptop finally died on me after five years, and George put up with several clueless email questions from me on how best to protect my new one:

THE FROST -- Got these Dick Wagner-led Detroit also-rans' debut Frost Music from 1969, and Popoff is definitely right in saying Amboy Dukes are the obvious late-psych-evolving-toward-metal Motor City comparison. Probably like it more than any Amboy Dukes LP I've heard, though. First side has loud folk-garage about sad girls on the run and other family issues, plus something called "Take My Hand" that sounds hilariously, maybe even illegally, like "Eight Miles High," at least after the opening, which sounds more like a precursor of Pere Ubu's "30 Seconds Over Toyko" (and therefore maybe Sab's "Electric Funeral" too.) Wagner gets to stretch out more, tastily, on two longer cuts on Side Two, which also has a kazoo (jew's harp?) driven teenybop sockhop kitscher called "Little Susie Singer (Music To Chew Gum By)," followed by "First Day Of May," probably not technically a conscious prequel for BOC's "Then Came The Last Days Of May" but Popoff's comparisons of the Frost's sound to Soft White Underbelly/Stalk Forrest Group kind of makes sense too, so you never know. Anyway, Dave Marsh wrote in a Detroit rock roundup in Creem way back then that Vanguard never properly promoted these "workmanlike" guys, hence their inability to ever break beyond the loyal local market. Rock And Roll Music, which came out later in '69, charted slightly higher nationally (#148 to #168). There was a third album, too. I've also got a Vanguard CD Best Of reissue from 2003, but I don't remember liking it as much last time I played it, despite a ten-minute (live I think) "Take My Hand"/"Mystery Man" and a 17-minute Animals cover, "We Got To Get Out Of This Place." Weirdly, outside of that medley, the best-of doesn't have any tracks from the debut on it; maybe there were contractural issues?

MADAM X -- Hadn't played the world-breakingly retardo looking 1984 We Reserve The Right by these codpiece-and-bondagegear-bedecked cucumber-stuffed-down-trousers two-boy/two-girl (including future Vixen drummer hottie Roxy Petrucci and her guitar sister Maxine) huge-hair types for several years, and it turned out to be way more fun than I'd remembered. (Had assumed I'd mainly just kept it for the cover, which has to be seen to be believed.) Sides both start with very catchy post-Alice/Kiss/Slade Twisted Sister/Quiet Riot-style shout-glam stomps for wayward teen sweat-hog dumbasses: "High In High School" (about just what it says, seemingly), "Reserve The Right To Rock" (which has jokes, sort of, about no shoes no shirt no service), and the unbelievable (Britny Fox worthy in its doofusitude) "Good With Figures," where Bret Kaiser actually brags about being illiterate ("Can't read, can't write, but there's one thing I can do all night"), but nonetheless excelling in math ("I'm good with figures/I like your figure/That figures!") "Max Volume" is some Great Kat-style classical metal showoff wank from Maxine, and both sides close with totally over-the-top true-metal speed-racers that take you by surprise. Rick Derringer produced; bassist calls himself Chris "Godzilla" Doliber.

love the frost. love amboy dukes too though. especially the later albums that are really more like ted solo records. survival of the fittest, call of the wild, tooth, fang, & claw.

Didn't really read it either way, xhuxk. Fwiw, though, I do think Starcastle definitely had some power in spite of the clean guitar. From their volume, from the bass playing.

And clean distortion, of course, can be powerful, as with Boston.

i've decided i really don't have a lot of love for the Fabulous Poodles. the early stuff is way more pubby and stuff and i SHOULD like it a bunch, but the violin bugs me and the stabs at pub rock C&W don't do much for me either. and later they just go all Joe Jackson and i really only need one or maybe two Joe Jacksons in my life. I'll take The Movies or The Motors over the Poodles.

i always forget which starcastle album i like the most. they all kinda blend together.

i now own the first FIVE Inmates albums.

and i was seriously grooving to Boomtown Rats last night. it's a shame that Geldof became some sorta Bono-like joke or whatever. That band could be truly great.

so, hey, gorge, i'm gonna be in los angeles at the end of february. at ucla. for the EMP conference thing. i'm gonna be on a panel with a former member of Squirrel Bait, so, it should be pretty cool.

here's my thing. that i haven't written yet:

"Ebay, Light Of My Life, Fire Of My Loins, My Sin, My Soul – The Confessions of a Record Dealer, The New Vinyl Renaissance, the Impossibility of Supplying the Demand for Old Led Zeppelin Records, and the Essential Human Need for Objects"
Vinyl is back! Not that it ever completely went away, but the interest in this near-obsolete format has led to a new spot on Billboard Magazine's sales charts, and a zillion recent nostalgia-laced and incredulous newspaper articles. The press interest reflects a more general national curiosity for anything Ebay/Antiques Roadshow/American Pickers which has led to Craigslist buying frenzies and speculation usually reserved for precious metals and pork bellies. Ditch the mutual funds and put everything in Northern soul 45s? How has the collector's market changed? Why do teenagers, happy to get their music for free online, STILL want to own classic rock LPs in archaic form? Ask any veteran record dealer and they will tell you that Ebay and the internet are the worst things that ever happened to records and that they are also God's greatest gift to mankind. What happened? Where is the new vinyl money going? And can anybody supply me with an endless stream of clean used Doors and Bob Marley records? Because I can sell them ALL day long.

Tim obviously has a good point about Boston, and Scott obviously has a good point about those later Amboy Dukes LPs. (I raved about Call Of The Wild on last year's thread. Then apologized, of course.) And I will always love the Fabulous Poodles way out of proportion to what their brand of spiv rock new wave probably deserved, thanks to their extreme importance to 1979 as I personally lived it. Their songs sunk in at the exact right moment, and I am unable to deny them now.

Had a post going about which Faces LPs I've decided I like more than other ones, and why I like the second Nick Gilder LP more than George does, but I'm just getting acclimated to my new keyboard, and the post disappeared into thin air. Probably wasn't all that interesting anyway. Someday maybe I'll bring it up again anyway.

Re you being in soCal, yeah, thought I saw your name in the materials. I might be able to get over to westwood. Don't know your dates. I'm doing a show on the 19th, a Saturday.

>>had some power in spite of the clean guitar. From their volume, from the bass playing.

You can sound real powerful doing clean. Particularly if it's just as the amp is kicking into overdrive. It can be alternately fat or really great for rhythm.

>>STILL want to own classic rock LPs in archaic form?

Because albums are still a good platform for subdividing the dope? Because they're good for tricking members of the opposite sex into thinking you're cool? They're actually antiques that show age and wear. Which iPods don't do. iPods are so ubiquitous and plain looking, they don't do cool. They just make you look like part of the crowd. Unless you get the Harmonica app, and put it in your mouth. Or the Guitar app, and pretend you're a guitar player. And then you just look stupid and annoying.

I dunno. All conjecture.

Why do guys who can't play guitar worth shit make a market for high end frou-frou custom shop classic Fender and Gibson guitars? Why are they the only reason Fender and Gibson, outside of people with major label deals, still have one factory in the US?

>>Hadn't played the world-breakingly retardo looking 1984 We Reserve The Right (by Madam X)

There's certainly no beating it in the categories of fright-wig and spectacle.

Particularly if it's just as the amp is kicking into overdrive. It can be alternately fat or really great for rhythm.

I think Starcastle used fuzzboxes, though! The lead parts in "Lady of the Lake" don't sound like amp overdrive. And, again, you often hear the two guys playing with a super clean, thin sound, so I'd assume that was their basic sound and then they'd use some pedals.

Also sounds like the bass player is playing with a fuzzbox on "Forces."

Old fuzzboxes clean up real well by simply turning down the volume nob on the guitar. And I actually like playing clean with a fuzz in the circuit because it compresses and adds punch to the tone.

So, anybody else here hip to this 1983 Party Tested album on Passport by Rick Derringer and Carmine Appice, released under the name DNA (not to be confused with no wave Arto Linday or dance-mixed Suzanne Vega), where they're trying hard to look new wave on the cover, in chemist labcoats, holding beakers and testtubes full of colorful mixed drinks, as party hats, favors, champagne bottles, panties, and vinyl records float through the air? Anyway, I kind of like it. Belongs on that one thread from a few years ago about "AOR Dinosaurs Going New Wave" or whatever it was called. Sounds like they were listing to plenty of Devo ("intellectual music for the masses"!), maybe some Gary Numan, Talking Heads, early '80s Prince -- plenty of funk attempts on Side Two, most notably chanted closer "What About" where Derringer's solo is worked into the rhythm. As many keyboards as guitars overall, naturally, plus a too-long "Rock And Roll Part Two" cover. But silly fun, regardless.

just revived this thread yesterday:

The best new wave song by an older musician doing new wave was...

and yeah the dna album is goofy, but i don't think i ever played it more than once. so i must not have loved it too much. had it on tape!

if i got one in at the store i would play it again.

hell, i should go look at my tapes in the store. it might even be there.

was playing some 80's alvin lee the other night and thoe albums are just produced so badly. on the other hand, 80's pat travers albums sound just fine. black pearl pat travers fusion project more likeable than i thought it would be.

don't know if i've ever heard an 80's SOLO rick derringer album.

Actually, that DNA album was on Boardwalk, not Passport.

So Scott, what Boomtown Rats have you been listening to? Went crazy again last year for the debut (made a Ratt-debut junior-Aerosmith rodent analogy on last year's thread), and I've always loved Tonic For The Troops. Fine Art Of Surfacing, the third one with "I Don't Like Mondays," is okay I guess. (Still own it.) After that, they lose me, or at least they did at the time -- haven't listened to any later stuff in forever. And then Geldof went on to save the world, or whatever.

the first three singles: "lookin' after number one" (backed with "born to burn" and the live track "barefootin'"), "mary of the 4th form"/"do the rat" and "she's so modern"/"lying again".

and the first two albums.

but i should keep my eye out for fine art of surfacing. don't have that.

and, yeah, after that, i'm not looking anymore.

i remember seeing them on the merv griffin show. thought they were so weird. and i remember when my brother brought tonic home from his record store job. loved "rat trap" so much.

so awesome that my brother brought tonic for the troops and life in the foodchain home that year. so, "rat trap" and "the funky western civilization" were on my hit parade in 1978. i was 10!

Wait, so who's reissuing the Bang LPs this time? On CD, or what?

^Lee Dorrian's label, on CD

Main new thing I'm getting out of Pat Travers' Live: Go For What You Know from 1979 is that, live, he apparently tried a lot harder than in the studio to sing like Hendrix. Except in "Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights)" (which I basically remember as his one and only radio hit, even though "Is This Love" from a year later charted a few Billboard Hot 100 spaces higher), where he sings (talks, shouts, whatever) more like George Thorogood -- in fact, I'm realizing that, at the time, I may even have confused the two of them. Which might ultimately be John Lee Hooker's fault, but still. Also want to note how some instrumental sections, especially in "Go All Night," remind me of some of the so-called "harmelodic" rock-funk-jazz stuff that cats like James "Blood" Ulmer (another Hendrix-vocal-and-guitar fan) were churning out a few years later, for a presumably more refined hipster audience. Curious whether Phil, who hears way more jazz than I do, would think I'm way off on that.

Never thought Pat Travers' live recordings were indispensable. Mostly because he was so explosive in the studio. You'll probably want to scrounge the Austin vinyl for Radioactive -- the next one, which I also like. It dies off on side 2, but side 1 is very good. Black Pearl was a departure for him, slightly toward pomp, adds a keyboard player, does Beethoven's 5th. That's where the studio version of "I La La La Love You" wound up. Hot Shot emulates big dumb American stadium rock including idiot lyrics, which works a bit although it's not as gripping as his early albums.

Then it was years in the wilderness until Mike Varney's Shrapnel gave him a home.

live version of boom boom is totally indispensable! love that thing.

i now own every travers album up to and including black pearl. i think i'm done. except i would totally buy hot shot if i saw it for a buck.

so maybe i'm not done.

i need every 70's mahogany rush album now. its actually kinda hard to find nice clean copies of some of them.

Dear Scott, t/f: The three best, heaviest, funkiest songs on Ramatam's first album from 1972 are also the three longest: "Ask Brother Ask," "Strange Place," and "Can't Sit Still." Or did I miss something? Also, Jasper and Oliver are crazy to complain about the band's "unnecessary" use of reeds, as the saxophone in "Can't Sit Still," especially, is very cool. (They do admit that April Lawton is "one of the best female guitarists around," at least. Whatever happened to her, anyway?)

It was either Nugent complaining about unemployed people being like welfare recipients -- he thinks they should tidy up around town or on the highways, like cons to 'earn' their benefit -- or Let's Lynch Lloyd Blankfein.

I'm going with the latter.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/01/30/lets-lynch-lloyd-blankfein/

chuck, you really really need this album. if you don't like it i'll eat my hat. even if you have to spend, like, FIVE dollars, its totally worth it.

http://62.15.226.148/fot/2008/01/20/7146815.jpg

if anyone asks me what kinda prog i like i'm just gonna say "bad company prog".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg7Dud55qlE

great Lone Star blooper reel here. drummer possibly blinds someone for life, but you don't actually get to see the results of his fancy stickwork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUTj8TBy8jM

Singer looks like he's wearing a bra.

r.i.p. gary moore.

Awesome guitarist, truly a shame.

For all the faceless hard rock/metal shredders that came out in the 80s, Moore actually brought some depth to the form.

I remember DNA, too. "Doctors of the Universe"! I think I had just learned to drive, and one day I saw in the paper that DNA were playing at a local (Dallas) cheese shop! I'd never heard of the place, but I called them up to cofirm, and sure enough, DNA! But after some additional questions it transpired that, crushingly, it was some other group by that name. Would have been too perfect, I guess.

I'd put this in rolling country but it would be more of an insult. Keith Urban did hookless rotten semi-hard rock as opener to the Super Bowl. Boy does he want people to think of him as a cool guitar hero. And boy does he suck at it. Not technically. He just came off as an dexterity expert with greasy hair who smokes a lot of weed and who never gets nay-said by his flunkies. And what's with the electric banjo player who can't be heard in the mix?

So, anybody else here hip to this 1983 Party Tested album on Passport by Rick Derringer and Carmine Appice, released under the name DNA

WRIF-101 in Detroit used "Party Tested" as the theme music for their "WRIF Rock Café", every night from 1-4am from 1983 through 1988 (if not later!) Or I think it was "Party Tested" - if not, then some other track on the album. The one that opened with the solo synth arpeggios then went into that two-chord Bo Diddley riff over the boring 4/4 midtempo beat. I only played the album a few times before getting rid of it.

RIP J. Paul Getty III, whose Italian-gangster-chopped-off ear was immortalized in "Last Child" by Aerosmith

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/europe/08gettyobit.html

The poor sod. Incontestable proof the rich aren't like you or me. They're much bigger douchebags.

Pretty sure Streetheart win the all-time hard rock These Guys Sure Look Like Aging Lesbians Award for the cover photo on Drugstore Dancer from 1980. Still, I like it a lot -- not as much as 1979's Under Heaven Over Hell (which I might put in a hard rock all-time Top 50 albums list if I ever did one -- produced very funky by Nazareth guy Manny Charlton btw), but I don't remember liking Quicksand Shoes (also 1980) this much, and that one's pretty good too. (Have never heard or seen a copy of Meanwhile Back In Paris..., their alleged 1978 debut. Not sure which 1980 LP came first, either. Both have the same lineup -- guitarist Paul Dean apparently left for Loverboy after LP #1, drummer Matt Frenette after #2. Actually, now that I look, Quicksand Shoes has Charlton producing too; Drugstore Dancer is produced by the band and on Capitol not Atantlic or WEA Canada, so I guess it's #4.) Anyway, fastest and heaviest cuts on Drugstore are "Go To Hell," "Sold Out" and my fave "You're Gonna Crash," but the whole album's solid -- Mott The Hooplish boogie woogie rock (title track), new wave with Rush changes ("Teenage Rage," followed by another apparent jailbait number called "Nobody Like You"), Stones-country partly about liking to shoot guns ("Let Me Go")--though I'd say the band's overall sound lands somewhere between early Kix and Hounds, about perfect for me obviously. And Kenny Shields has a snotty squirrelly high register similar to Nigel Benjamin in post-Hoople Mott. Keep thinking Streetheart were from Vancouver, but Popoff says it's actually Regina, Saskatchewan. Drugstore Dancer's recorded in Winnipeg, and they all look cold and weather-beaten standing in front of that storefront on the cover. Yankee jacket guy seems to have lost a few teeth playing hockey. Tall bowl-haircut guy in the middle resembles a cross between Lurch and creepy Stuart on Mad TV.

Off topic, Scott and George, I assume you saw this story about the devastating gas-line explosion in Allentown Wednesday night? Mid-America's infrastructure goes down with the ship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/us/11allentown.htmlA

If that link doesn't work, try this one (newer story anyway)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/12allentown.html?ref=naturalgas

have you seen the ruins of detroit pictures yet, chuck?

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroit/2672/

Yeah, I saw the news. It wasn't far from the newspaper. Which puts in the downtown which, residentially, is a slum. The poor take it in the shorts.

The irony of pictures of Detroit ruin appearing in the Denver Post is pretty thick. No one at the Detroit newspaper needs to see them because they live there, I suppose.

Anyway, there's this too:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_katrina_life_in_the_ruins

Pasadena has very few ruins but a lot of empty office and apartment space. You have to go out into the Inland Empire, or parts of the San Fernando Valley or into -- paradoxically -- the 'red' parts of the state inland where blight and stagnation are often the highest, to see more ruins.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/12/us-environment-radically-hostile-to-middle-class-employment/

We're having a gig in Pasadena next Saturday and as a result I put together some CDs to sell to the audience, one of which is US of Fail.

http://smollin.com/dd/audio/index.htm

For the most part that was a thematic effort to address some of last year. If there's any interest here I could put the MP3's in a zip file on my server.

=====

Now, spent some time this week re-enjoying Bill Nelson's guitar for BeBop Deluxe due to revival in another thread. Still love "Fair Exchange" and "Blazing Apostles" from Sunburst Finish a lot. And had a remaster I made years before the albums were actually remastered. Made a cover for it with this note in Futurama:

"Notorious pantywaist Bill Nelson dresses in bodystocking, supplies napalm guitar to most of Futurama's mix of progressive noise, heavy art glam and ... of course, the favorite, cocktail jazz. Bandmates dress in SS uniforms on back cover, always a sensible career move inspiring confidence and admiration at the label." (Harvest, 1975)

Buncha Past Expiry I've been listening to the past few days:

Mott Drive On (1975) Obviously a huge dip in personality sans-Hunter/Hoople, but as has been said here elsewise, this is still a good hard rock record. Pretty sure I'd take it over that first Widowmaker. (Have heard no other Widowmaker or post-Ian Mott.) Heaviest cut seems to "The Great White Wail," but the cuts that most kill me are "It Takes One To Know One" (about a bar fight) and "Stiff Upper Lip" (surprisingly canny approximation of those proto-Pistols/Clash England's-economy-going-down-the-tubes songs that Ian was writing and singing on The Hoople a year earlier, though Overend wrote this one.) Also like "Monte Carlo," about getting the hell outta town. (Popoff places the album's sound "somewhere between Heavy Metal Kids and Detective," not a bad place to be, if also not exactly a saleable one.)

Motors Approved By (1978) Think I'd been kind of confused on another thread recently in which I referred to this as their "self-titled debut album"; you have to look really hard to see that "Approved By" stamp in the lower right-hand corner, so self-titled's what I thought it was. But I guess they'd had an actual self-titled (well, Motors 1) that came out a year before (don't think I've ever heard it actually), and I'm now guessing that's the one that George calls their hard rock record. This one has moments -- especially "You Beat The Hell Outta Me," which could just as well be about playing snooker or darts as literally getting one's ass kicked as far as I know, but I could totally imagine it as a Count Bishops song. But that's the only real hard rocker I'm hearing. Opener and closer do fancy piano drama stuff (which I think the Motors would do even more of on Tenement Steps in 1980); "Forget About You" (apparently a U.K. Top 20, as was opener "Airport") and "Soul Redeemer" blatantly steal their main hooks from earlier '70s bubblegum and glam hits I can't place (though I'm thinking maybe Daniel Boone's "Beautiful Sunday" for the former and something by Gary Glitter -- or maybe Wizzard or Mud? -- for the latter.) "Do You Mind" is a passably classic-rockish bit of misogyny. Rest is always decent, but not what I'd call great, I don't think.

Bram Tchaikovksy Strange Man Changed Man (1979) This is the one that really took me by surprise, especially since I've probably owned it on and off, three times I bet, since "Girl of A Dreams" hit (never got rid of the 45), but always figured it for filler-filled, fairly wimpy, not all that catchy powerpop beyond the single. Well, I don't know what the heck I was listening to for the past 30 years, because turns out this is one great classic-rock guitar album. "Girl Of My Dreams" (about an inflatable doll if anybody didn't know, and a #37 U.S. hit that I'm not sure I've ever heard on the radio since) is obviously pretty cool with its Born to Run swipes and Byrds/Petty/Records jangle, but it's really not typical. Loudest/most hard rock song on the album is the one right after, "Nobody Knows," a total killer, then token (and super catchy) bar-fight song "Turn On The Light" and, believe it or not, the cover of the Monkees' "I'm A Believer" (done like say Brownsville Station or Earthquake might do it), then I guess "Bloodlines" and the title track and maybe "Sara Smiles" (not the Hall & Oates song.) Early-Who-style guitars and hooks all over this thing, also some Link Wray. Bram Tchaicovksy the guy is actually Peter Brammell from the Motors, but the band's called Bram Tchaikovsky too, so I never know whether to file it in the B's or the T's. (Record guides I've got seem to disagree on the issue.) Plus the LP cover has this really nifty looking fake-Russkie motif, which apparently they carried over on their next one, called The Russians Are Coming (though renamed Pressure in the U.S.) Never heard that, though I've got their third (on which they revive the Motors' "Soul Surrender"), and need to put that on soon too.

Steve Gibbons Band Live -- Caught in In The Act (1977) I'm kind of skeptical about live albums in principle, and as usual you can't really heard the songs as well on this one as on their four studio jobs. (Yeah, I've got them all now.) But Side One here isn't bad (starts with a good Dylan cover, ends with a better Dylan imitation), and Side Two might be the most hard-rocking side they ever did. Favorite song -- Lynott-worthy -- is probably "One Of the Boys", but they do a fast tough boogie in "You Gotta Pay," some near-early-ZZ redneck funk in "Speed Kills," and a cool six-minute guitar jam "Rollin'", to surround down-to-earth but drug-related covers from the Beatles ("Day Tripper") and Chuck Berry ("Tulane").

i've never been able to get into steve gibbons. chuck, you need to hear those british lions albums. there are two of them. post-mott band.

i've cooled a little on that widowmaker album. i think i was drunk when i first played it. the 2nd album is even weaker.

The Nomads All Wrecked Up (1989) Best supposed "'60s garage rock revival" band of the '80s or '90s as far as I'm concerned, though the album I used to play to death is I think their first, Outburst, from 1984 (maybe technically a comp of earlier Swedish EPs, come to think of it), which was mostly covers (always loved their version of Alex Chilton's "Bangkok" best, and I'm somebody who has never had much use for Chilton), though I just checked and what do you know, the Nomads wrote "Where The Wolf Bane Blooms," one of the two or three catchiest cuts, themselves. Anyway, I think they concentrated more on originals and got heavier as time goes on, but also didn't come up with as many hooks as on that first one. (Around '86 or so there was a sort of side project 45 under the name Screaming Dizbusters, on which they covered "This Ain't The Summer Of Love"; used to have the 45.) Anyway, I've been starting to replay their later albums, of which I still have a few. All Wrecked Up's a Swede import, and as I expected -- less obviously "garage" than early on, but also less memorable. Consistently listenable, though. Cuts that jumped out: "I Don't Need No Doctor" (writing-credited to Ashford & Simpson and not sounding much like Humble Pie, but with soul-singer backup), "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" (as in New York Dolls, obvious from the sound, though Johnny Thunders actually guests on a different cut), and five-minute closer "Down By The River" (with lots of noisy early Stooges-tribute wah-wah, though the Nomads don't have the early Stooges rhythm section or vocals obviously.)

Japan Obscure Alternatives (1978) Does not belong on this thread -- not much of a rock record at all -- though every five years or so I look at how glam they look (in 1978) on the LP cover, and I think it might rock me. Nope, even though in a apparently unintentionally hilarious Trouser Press Record Guide writeup, Ira Robbins talks about how Japan started out "emulating (badly) the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper" but finished "five years later, as one of the most sophisticated art-rock-pose outfits, respected by other musicians and branching out into such fields as sculpture and photography. Amazing." Yep -- that's exactly what I want rock bands to turn into: sculptors and photographers! Amazing! Anyway, I'm not hearing any Dolls or Alice, bad or otherwise, on this album. (Maybe Ira was confusing them with Hanoi Rocks, who they kinda look like?) Maybe some late '70s Bowie from after he stopped rocking though. (One song's called "Suburban Berlin.") Maybe some bad Roxy. But none of the songs really grab me, either way. And I remember their later stuff (not that I've ever explored it much, or plan to) being even more boring. Maybe I keep the record because, in theory, I think there's something half interesting about being stuck between glam and goth, and not being either, or sounding sort of like Gary Numan before he did. (Actually, some vocals remind me more of Magazine, or maybe Ultravox? I dunno.) Or maybe I just like the cover, and I figure one day the music will finally sink in. It sounds okay in the background. Doesn't offend me or anything. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Japan have supporters on this board (maybe even this thread), so I'm just throwing this out there. Maybe somebody can explain them to me. (Followed up Japan with a Deaf School LP from the same year, English Boys/Working Girls, and liked their concise pre-oi! soccer-hooligan-shout take on Bowie/Roxy a lot more than Japan. Sometimes got the idea they predated some of Blur's rare bearable moments, not that I've spent much time in my life listening to Blur exactly. But it doesn't sound like Deaf School actually knew how to play rock music, either, and I'd obviously like them a lot more if they did.)

Btw, when I say Gibbons is doing his Dylan thing, it's probably not that far from Ian Hunter's Dylan thing in Mott -- a hard rock version, in other words. Though a couple weeks ago I was playing Mott's debut album, for the first time in ages, and my wife kept cracking up at Hunter's Dylany vocals, calling them ridiculous, like maybe when Weird Al does Dylan or something. And on that first album, they kind of are! But Hunter definitely toned them down, made the influence more subtle, later.

And eh, Deaf School do have some rock in their sound, actually -- definitely a lot more than any Blur I've ever heard, though probably not as much as Boomtown Rats' Tonic For The Troops (which a few of their songs sort of sound like.) The guitars in "Working Girls" are even kind of heavy. But I still get the idea they're more a Brit cabaret band than a rock band at heart. (Then again, it's not like no British glam or art-rock bands in the '70s pulled cabaret-rock off.)

Yeah, that Japan album tricked me with its cover in 1978. Boy was I disappointed. Has no place on this thread, yer right.

Deaf School had a lot of vaudeville/end-of-the-pier stuff in them. Moreso than anything else which amde the "English Boys (With Guns)" song the only one that stayed with me from that album. Which is where they sound kind of oi.

"Forget About You" on that Motors record sounds a lot like "Sooner or Later" by the Grass Roots.

Yeah, "English Boys (With Guns)" definitely the most memorably music-hall Cockney thing on that Deaf School album. Also wondering how much of the rock feel, inasmuch as it's there -- not to mention the Boomtown Rats similarity, inasmuch ditto -- is really the doing of Mutt Lange (who produced both bands).

i was listening to deaf school last week and i kept thinking how someone could make a good broadway musical revue of their stuff. a la rocky horror. or hedwig. or something.

Not enough guitar for Hedwig. Stephen Trask had a guitar presence he brought to everything after Hedwig got big. And it definitely landed on the pop riff hard rock side of things while Deaf School was Tin Pan Alley. And I didn't remember Mutt Lange had produced DS before he was Mutt which probably had something to do with "English Boys" having an actual stomp to it. Because when I bought subsequent Deaf School records they just didn't have any of that.

The vaudeville thing with real rock and roll was best carried out by Alberto lost Trios Paranoias, who also happened to be ace satirists. A lot of their stuff is on YouTube. I'd recommend the live TV rendition of the Snuff Rock A-side and the faux Status Quo "Head's Down No-Nonsense Mindless Boogie," which actually charted in Britain.

my favorite paranoias thing is their space rock parody. they bust on hawkwind. definitely a great post-bonzo dog band effort. very funny.

A friend just linked to this video on his Facebook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UmhrqL1JSg

Pretty cool! Rate Your Music says it came out in 1974 but I never heard of it before...

More info:

Portland's Stepson were a sweatdrenched bluesy hard rock act that rose from the ashes of defunct area band, Touch. Their sole album was released on ABC/Dunhill Records in 1974, though the band were essentially a studio creation. Despite the fact that the band never toured in support of this amazing album, over the years the word has gotten out about this incredible album and the band enjoys cult success among collectors and obscurity geeks. Though the album doesn't reinvent the wheel, it is a fine example of Detroit style hard rock with a healthy dose of punk attitude. Easily one of the best example of "cock rock" to come along at such an early stage of the genre's existence, Stepson deserve recognition for their meager contribution to rock music. After the band's efforts to record a followup were snuffed out, several members went on to later work for Elektra Records. Others went on to do session work for notably fluffier artists like Carole King, James Taylor and Shaun Cassidy.

http://robotsforronnie.blogspot.com/2007/06/stepson-stepson-1974.html

Portland! So they obviously influenced grunge...

i talked about them on a past expiry thread. and posted a video too. great history of the band in the last issue of ugly things. everything you could ever want to know about stepson. great album.

I went through a protometal faze a few years back and have a bunch of CDs... Must compile a list and see if I have anything I can contribute though more likely I'll get a list of things I need to buy!

Jasper and Oliver on Stepson: "A very hard-rocking band which at the time of recording must have been quite a knockout. They still sound forceful today. They are similar, musically, to Black Oak, Cactus, and Nazareth."

i was listening to deaf school last week and i kept thinking how someone could make a good broadway musical revue of their stuff. a la rocky horror. or hedwig. or something.

― scott seward, Monday, February 14, 2011 1:59 AM (19 hours ago)

Someone did!! From wiki:

1997 - Brighton based theatre production company Hanover Productions staged the world premiere of "2nd Honeymoon - The Musical" at The Brighton Festival. With a book/script written by actor-musician Chris Beaumont it played for 6 successful nights although didn't manage to go further. Using all of the songs from the album of the same name plus "Darling" and a new number "I Need A Man", the show was performed by ten actor/musicians who collectively played all of the numbers live.

something to do with "English Boys" having an actual stomp to it. Because when I bought subsequent Deaf School records they just didn't have any of that.

- Gorge, Monday, February 14, 2011 2:58 AM (18 hours ago)

There are no subsequent records that I know of. "2nd Honeymoon," "Don't Stop The World" (those two packaged as a set in America) and "English Boys..." and that's all she wrote. There was a live reunion CD in the 80s that I've never heard.

Unless you meant you heard "English Boys" first and then backtracked, in which case I concur. I actually prefer the fey, arty stuff. It always felt to me like "English Boys" was their backing away from cabaret pop and coming to terms with punk. ("Ronnie Zamora" etc.) The Original Mirrors and Bette Bright's solo LP are still in my stacks, but I never play them.

Yeah, I backtracked. Like "English Boys," thought I might like the others, too. Not really, as it turned out.

Must compile a list and see if I have anything I can contribute though more likely I'll get a list of things I need to buy!

Heh. Here's one of my old lists from back when I used a typewriter. Badly.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/05/15/sludge-in-the-seventies-a-list/

Stepson's on it.

i like or love 95% of that list. i was digging lone star last week! got two albums by them i think.

i think i've heard just about everything on that list except axis and goddo. and i might not have heard all of those alex harvey albums. heard a couple on there.

and i've been digging More lately too! those albums are cool.

You have to get a listen to Axis sometime. The title track, "It's a Circus World (And I'm an Animal)" and "Ray's Electric Farm." Re More, I probably like Warhead a bit more than Blood & Thunder.

This landed in my Ted Nugent basket today. It made me laugh:

"Summer festival Rib America returns this May 27th – May 30th to the Soldiers Memorial in downtown St. Louis.

"The festival will be featuring its typical lineup of washed up bands from the past whose better days are behind them. The bands performing include Puddle of Mudd, Kansas, Montrose, Candlebox, .38 Special, Derek St. Holmes (formerly with Ted Nugent), Mark Farner (formerly of Grand Funk Railroad), Pat Travers, Fabulous Motown Revue, and a few others to be announced."

Any bets on how long it will take Ted Nugent to attack the union worker protesters in Wisconsin? What are the odds he will call them bloodsuckers?

Soon,, I bet: protesting unionized public employees, that's a guaranteed Nugent target three ways.

Anyway, speaking of cabaret-rock as were above (though this time not in the Deaf School music hall sense, but in the sense that all these ladies seem like they would've been more at home doing Tin Pan Alley/Great American Songbook crap in some boite somewhere), I've pretty much decided that Ellen Shipley's first/self-titled album from 1979 that I got for a buck is better than either of the first two Ellen Foley albums that I got for a buck a year or two ago, though not nearly as much as the first two Pat Benatar albums. (I’ll always associate both those Ellens in my head, because I remember Rolling Stone reviewed them together at the time, along with Carolyne Mas, whoever she was. Don’t think I read the review though, and don’t know who they liked best. Shipley’s the only one who didn’t chart, though the other two didn’t chart very high either.) Anyway, side one is mostly too ballady, though “Catch The Cobra”’s a minor sort of production extravaganza, and “Good Thing Goin’” hops with its horns okay. Guitars get comparatively louder on side two – some from Rick Derringer, supposedly, not that you can really tell. (Some from G.E. Smith too, and Hall & Oates sing backup somewhere.) “Little Sister” and “Over the Edge” probably rock at or near the level of most early Benatar, and I like the male gang-yell choruses in the kinda new wavey keyboarded “I’m Jumping Out Of My Skin” and toward the guitar climax of “Stray Dog.” So, a keeper, but just barely. And I’m probably done exploring this little mini-genre for now, unless I see a copy of the Eve Moon album that I reviewed in college.

Third Bram Tchaicovsky album I mentioned a few days ago, Funland from 1981, turns out to have only one song, “Model Girl,” where the powerchords punch anything like they did on his/their debut. Really “his,” since other than Bram, it’s not even the same band (unless bassist Mickey Broadbent is now calling himself “Lord Richard Itchington.”) Doesn’t sound like the same band either – more acoustic folk-rock, just fussier sounding in general; the re-do of “Soul Surrender” from Bram’s Motors days has all the glam rock taken out, now sounds more like an early ‘80s Squeeze filler track or something. There’s also a middling rockabilly thing, “Miracle Cure,” and and an almost twee one called “Why Does My Mother ‘Phone Me” (weird apostrophe before that “Phone” there) with trumpets. No need to hang on to this.

(uh, meant "not nearly as good as the first two Pat Benatar albums." And it's Tchaikovsky, not Tchaicovsky.)

You should probably take a look at the three official Carolyne Mas video promos from 78 on YouTube. "Stillsane," "Quote Goodbye Quote" -- Jersey bar band rock, popular at the time, maybe a touch of New Wave. Very Joe Grushecky, Michael Stanley. Carla Olsen fans might like it, also. Live stuff, "Baby Please," from Deutschland has a rougher edge, still with big Jersey Shore sax thing.

"They made me pin the hat to my head," she writes.

chuck, i can't remember if you are a fan of The Movies. i mean, i guess if you like the motors you might be a fan of the movies. i've been listening to a lot of motors and movies lately. gosh, the inmates sounded so good to me this morning. i really like that band. i like them more than most american retro garage bands. listened to the third trapeze album this morning too. i think its their third. from 1972. the paul rodgers love is deep on that album. which is fine by me.

Okay, actually, I'm pretty sure I've seen the first Carolyne Mas album around; think she's wearing a top hat on the cover or something? Next time it's cheap, I'll pick it up. And I'll keep my eyes peeled for the Movies too (who I vaguely remember existing; not sure if I ever heard them.)

Scott also convinced me to pull back out both Inmates LPs I've got, Shot In The Dark and, uh...whatever the debut with "Dirty Water" (which was huge in Detroit btw) was called. Except, the debut LP's not on my shelf, what the fuck!? No way did I get rid of that thing. (Why would I get rid of that and keep the later one?) (Maybe I just misfiled it? But where???)

Yeah, the top hat LP is the one. She's put up everything you need to hear, see and know on YouTube, god bless her.

Gig announcement, Saturday, in Pasadena:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/17/dd-show-in-pasadena-saturday/

So what's the deal with the Motors' Tenement Steps, from 1980? To me it was always their "big" album, since the side-openers "Love And Loneliness" and "Tenement Steps" got played all the time on University of Missouri's station KCOU in the early '80s, but that might just be a factor of when I was listening. Both those songs are souped-up and grandiose, emphasizing keyboards/piano over guitars, for over four and a half minutes, and three other tracks on the album exceed that length. The "band" is down to just two guys, Andy McMaster and Nick Garvey, plus studio help. What happened, did they suddenly think they could reel in Queen fans, now that Queen didn't sound like Queen anymore? And I was thinking that even before I remembered Queen had a song called "Tenement Funster." But Queen were also a lot heavier than these guys, obviously, and almost every song on this album -- at least until the closing stomp "Modern Man," when the guitars finally come out. (What's with aging wannabe new wavers and songs about being "modern," anyway? Were they all scared by Devo, or the '80s coming? See Bram T's "Modern Girl," also the hardest rocking song on his third album.) Anyway, I still have a nostalgia for those two college radio cuts, and I like how "Tenement Steps" and "Slum People" talk about danger in the bad part of town. And "Nightmare Zero" has some punch to it. Second side's actually kind of good, though it's easy to imagine how it could be better. Weird hexagonal LP cover sometimes leaves me all thumbs, though.

More pub powerpop new wave, not as rocking as that first Bram T album but still more powerchorded than I'd remembered: "All Messed Up And Ready To Go" (kinda punky that one), "Girl," and especially "Girls That Don't Exist" on the first Records LP. (Self-titled in U.S., not in U.K.) "Girls That Don't Exist," the hardest rocker, gets a different publishing credit than the rest of the album, and is partly songwriting-attributed to Richie Bull, who was apparently in the mid '70s pub band Kursaal Flyers along with Will Birch; looks like it's a carryover from them. (Have never heard the Kursaals, I don't think, except "Television Generation" on Epic's Permanent Wave V/A comp, which I always liked, though I guess that came near the end of their career? Suddenly I'm curious, though supposedly they started out doing Brinsley Schwarz style country rock?) Anyway, the two most memorable songs on the Records LP are still the same ones they always were, "Starry Eyes" (about international financial intrigue, somehow, though I've never exactly figured out the plot) and "Teenarama" (about jailbait). But outside of "Starry Eyes," I get the idea that the Byrds and Brit Invasion/Merseybeat (Hollies/Beatles supposedly, and Searchers, who Will Birch helped revive a couple years later) influence on these guys might have been slightly overstated. It's in there, but it's not all that's in there.

Meant to say (about the Motors) "almost every song on this album ...could've benefited from a more spare arrangement."

Okay, just checked out the Kursaals' "Drinking Socially" from 1976, on the Goodybe Nashville: Hello Camden Town pub-rock CD comp -- definitely lands toward the cordial honky-tonking country end of the pub spectrum. Okay, but no great shakes. (First two Kursaals LPs apparently came out in 1975, and apparently one of the original band members was Graeme Douglas, who went on to be in Eddie and the Hot Rods.)

Liner notes to Permanent Wave comp: "'Television Generation' is the last single ever recorded by British pub-rockers the Kursaal Flyers. A pop punk parody...'Television Generation' suggests not so much the Kursaals as it does the future band of the K.F.'s drummer and chief lyricist Will Birch: The Records, a charming pre-Knack, mop-top-sounding quartet who have scored heavily with 'Starry Eyes'." Hmmm.

Oops, left out the most revealing part of that: "It is also their only remotely punkish record."

Wrote about Tenement Steps here too, fwiw, two years ago (and said some of the same things):

"I'd buy that for a dollar!" Great purchases for a buck or less

Thinks the Motors guys were in Ducks Deluxe for the first album. Wasn't heavily impressed with it although there were a few moments. Sean Tyla later hired the Winkies, made the Blow You Out and
Yachtless material which is all ace in my book. But I liked the Winkies one album too.

Never got to Tenement Steps with the Motors.

The Records -- used to like it a lot more than I do now. First got the "Rock n Roll Love Letter" 12-inch single which also had "Teenarama" on it, I think. That's about all I need now although "All Messed Up and Ready to Go" might be a third. Have a live thing by them after the second record, which I never heard. It's OK. They didn't quite pull it off live. The guys voice doesn't work so hot in a club. In fact, it gets to me over the course of an entire album.

i like the long extended arrangements on tenement steps. pubprog. kinda. like that winkies album too! they were kinda doomed by that album cover though!

Ha, just noticed that the guitarist for the Inmates calls himself Peter Gunn. Also, at least three of the cover versions on Shot In The Dark from 1980 had been previously done by Michigan hard rock acts: '60s soul song "Some Kinda Wonderful" by Grand Funk, Junior Parker's "Feelin' Good" by Brownsville Station (as "Martian Boogie"), Music Machine's "Talk Talk" by Alice Cooper on Flush the Fashion (okay, also 1980, so maybe Inmates did it first -- Alice charted in May, Inmates LP didn't chart.) Best song on the album I didn't hear before: "Stop It Baby," which the Inmates do real snotty Standells/Count Five style, though I have no idea if it's a cover or not. (Credited to somebody named "Maxwell.") So yeah, they do '60s garage way better than most '80s/'90s/'00s retro garage types. Thing is, more often, on this album at least, I'd just call them a better than average garage band -- want the first couple songs on the album to stomp like the Count Bishops or Dr. Feelgood, but they don't, really. Sorta-ballad "Sweet Rain" on Side Two sounds like late Geils filler; inflections very Peter Wolf there. Remember the very-late-'79 debut I still can't find First Offense (charted in December) being better though -- Along with "Dirty Water" (#51 pop hit), "Mr. Unreliable" and "The Walk" both got a little airplay in Detroit, I think. (Also, looks like they also covered Pretty Things' "Midnight To Six Man"? Cool choice.)

"call them a better than average bar band," I meant. Could use somebody like Thorogood on guitar, maybe.

i like the production on the inmates albums. that british tight-assed compact sound of the punk era. and their albums never get bad on into the 80's. they kept plugging away with the same basic format and it just sounds really satisfying to me. and the u.s. production of most 80's/90's retro garage stuff usually sucks so bad. if it isn't lo-fi faux-badass its big dumb echo-y R.E.M./Mitch Easter/Don Dixon kinda thing that sounds really really terrible now.

Looks like there may have been a "Stop It Baby" '60s garage song by a band from Rochester called The Heard? (Never heard of them, ha.)

Also, speaking of old bands I never heard of, I googled a band called Bullet that A. Begrand compared to old Accept and AC/DC on Rolling Metal (I was lurking -- still curious about that Bullet too), and I found this on Wikipedia, interesting due to our rock-era early Wild Cherry discussion last year:

Bullet was a one-hit wonder American rock band. Its one hit, "White Lies, Blue Eyes", peaked at #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January 1972. Band member (keyboards, vocals) Roget Pontbriand went on to play with K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Wild Cherry.

I need to look up that song on youtube; doesn't ring a bell at all. (My Joel Whitburn chart-singles book confirms that it got to #28, but says Bullet were a "London-based duo of former Atomic Rooster members"! But according to Bullet's Wiki entry, that's a mistake, and to avoid confusion, the Atomic Rooster-spinoff U.K. Bullet had to change their name to Hard Stuff -- whose 1973 Bolex Dementia just happens to be #310 in Stairway to Hell, weird!)

I wrote about the Swedish Bullet (that's the one Adrien was talking about; there was also an '80s German band with that name) on MSN today. Here's a link.

xhuxk, there's a music geek on the beginning of this vid to explain the whole Atomic Rooster thing! (Not the same band.) I totally remember "White Lies, Blue Eyes" from when I was a kid, very keyboard heavy and Three Dog Night-ish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y91lN7wkEmg

I downloaded Hard Stuff's Bulletproof a couple of months back, but never got around to listening to it.

Magic Mike otm

Argh. Music Mike! But in my defense, dude is magic!

Agree with Scott's appraisal of '80s/'90s neo-garage (faux-badass or just plain wimpy) at least 95% of the time, but still think the Nomads were one of the few exceptions that prove the rule. Played Hardware from 1987 yesterday, liked pretty much all of it, though they already weren't coming up with the tunes they'd had on Outburst. Thought "Swamp Girl"s heavy Cramps (though I'm not a huge Cramps fan) and "Temptation Pays Double"'s rocking guitar country were catchiest, and "Surfin' The Bars" and detoxed "(I Can't Use) The Stuff I Used To Use" had stuck with me over the years too.

But then admittedly I put on Rose Tattoo's Scarred For Life from 1982 and they blew the Nomads out of the water, even though they kind of sound like they're coasting for most of the first half compared to their first two LPs, and "Sydney Girls" is a reggae (??) song. Not sure I'd ever noticed before how dirty "Juice On The Loose" and "Texas" are. "Texas" totally kills, too (ZZ tribute?); so do "Scarred For Life," "Branded," "Dead Set."

Found a cassette of Payola$' (not pre-Ma$e/Ke$ha dollar sign) 1983 Hammer On A Drum a couple weeks ago, and bought it even though I don't think I ever heard of them before, since it only cost 25 cents and Mick Ronson produced it. Noticed later that Ian Hunter supposedly sings backup on it somewhere, though I have no idea where, and Bruce Fairborn is credited with "bugle," and the Payola$' guitarist is future Metallica/Crue/Aerosmith/Cult/Bon Jovi producer Bob Rock. Band was from Vancouver. Anyway, I've been playing the tape a lot in my car for the past couple weeks, even though it's pretty marginal, and not very hard rock. (Allegedly their earlier two albums from before they graduated from I.R.S. to A&M, and especially their first 7-inch EP, were punker.) Wound up liking "I'll Find Another (Who Can Do It Right)" (which I bet they wanted to be their dance-rock-pop MTV hit). "Wild West," "Christmas Is Coming," and especially "I Am A City" (sounds kinda pre-Screaming Blue Messiahs in parts) well enough that I won't toss the tape in the garbage. But mostly they remind me of the Alarm and Midnight Oil; i.e., like they liked U2's and the Clash's early '80s records a lot but were too dumb to pull that off. Paul Hyde's fake Brit accent is pretty annoying too. (My wife thought he might be Robert Smith.) The protest track,, "Perhaps Some Day," is just awful. Do like the big dubby drum sound they get on most of Side Two, though -- better than the guitar sound, anyway.

But Paul Hyde is British. He emigrated to Vancouver.

Payola$ were a pretty cool band back in the day. "Where is This Love" remains a good little tune (albeit a bit pompous), and "Eyes of a Stranger" (1982 single) was absolutely massive here.

Ha, shows what I know! Guess I meant his real British accent is annoying, then.

Not exactly sure what I meant by "dumb" up there -- Peter Garrett is almost definitely no imbecile as rock musicians go, no more than Joe Strummer or Bono anyway. And it's not even really like I like Midnight Oil any less than U2; could take or leave both of them, usually, and I tend to skip over any pieces the NYTimes lets Bono write for the op-ed page. But the Payola$ do remind me of Midnight Oil anyway. And the Alarm probably were dumb.

(Also meant "note" the $, not "not.")

"2nd Honeymoon," "Don't Stop The World" (those two packaged as a set in America) and "English Boys..." and that's all she wrote. ... I actually prefer (Deaf School's) fey, arty stuff. It always felt to me like "English Boys" was their backing away from cabaret pop and coming to terms with punk

Went back and listened to that twofer vinyl set of the first two albums, and I'm surprised to find that I actually think I prefer them, too -- Though I probably like their less fey, arty cuts best. There are actually two at least partially rocking tracks on Don't Stop The World, the 1977 album -- "Capaldi's Cafe" at the end of Side One which is at least as much a Cockney alehouse shout-punk brawler as "English Boys (With Guns)" a year later, and "Hypertension Yeah Yeah Yeah" at the start of Side Two, which starts out doing a fairly convincing Thin Lizzy guitar thing. Both cuts are great for the most part, but seem to loose their footing and turn more cabaret before they end, which makes me think Deaf School may have been being somehow ironic with the rock moves. Also like "What A Jerk" on that album, where they seem to be playing with Afro-Caribbean co-ed harmonies and rhythm; sounds like Vampire Weekend decades before the fact, only better. (10cc had done that kind of hybrid at least once too; maybe they were the inspiration.) 2nd Honeymoon from 1976 sounds very Roxy to me, often in a good (very early Roxy; i.e. not slow) way, with Andy MacKay-style sax even, and propulsion from maybe campy-in-intention-but-so-what barrelhouse/brothel pianos; works best in "Get Set Ready Go," probably, though I also really like "What A Way To End It All," which sounds like the weird French pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko would a decade later. "Where's The Weekend" has some early Sparks in it, though their less guitar-oriented side unfortunately. Anyway, they somehow overall seem looser on these than on their third album, even if that one had Mutt helping them out. And I get what people are saying about the thespian stuff, but actually most of the words tend to go right by me.

Also been playing Golden Earring's To The Hilt from 1976 the past couple days; a real how-the-hell-do-they-do-that record. Can't think of many groups who could come off so prog/arty yet so rock-grounded at the same time; they really don't sound like anybody else, do they? At least nobody I can think of. (Popoff says "rhythm and blues of Taylor-era Stones as interpreted by Gong or Amon Duul II or Gentle Giant"; I dunno, makes sense on paper maybe.) Definitely hear some jazz in there during certain spans, though I have no idea what jazz and I'm no fusion expert. "Latin Lightnin'" on Side Two doesn't sound Latin but does have some rhythmic motif repeated over and over and over, so maybe that's the Kraut rock influence. (Alan Neister once called "Radar Love" -- which is on a different album -- "a fusion of Canned Heat and Kraftwerk." Not sure I buy that, either, but I like the idea.) They just always sound warmer than most Krauts did at the time, to my ears.

Saw a late '80s Painted Willie LP on SST in a dollar bin the other day (orange cover one, if that matters); didn't buy it, because I thought they were one of the label's worst rock bands (which is saying a lot) at the time. But I'm wondering if anybody here ever thought otherwise.

And by "warmer than most Krauts" (in re Golden Earring), I guess I mainly mean "meatier" -- They sound like a hard rock band if you're not listening close, but if you do, they sound just as weird as any Germans. (Maybe being Dutch somehow let them walk both sides of the street? Didn't usually work as well for Focus, though.)

i think i saw painted willie open up for black flag in the 80's. along with Gone. people would sit through anything to see black flag back then. kind of a dirty trick if you ask me.

kinda wish this kraan album i'm listening to right now had a little dutch hard rock on it.

i'm gonna play killer records next. the band KILLER. kind of a swiss ac/dc tribute band. i have three of their records here at the store and i keep waiting for just the right swiss hard rock fan to show up and buy them.

okay in 1981 Killer were a swiss ac/dc cover band. by 1984 they had gone glam and their singer had stopped being a carbon copy of brian johnson. i'd have to say i'm not a big fan of either era in killer's history.

How can there be room for more than one AC/DC tribute band from Switzerland? Krokus has that nailed, right? "Tonight Long Stick Goes Boom" ultimate Swiss men AC/DC tribute, ever.

Comedy moment in Krokus Kareer, onstage at the Stabler arena in Saucon Valley outside Bethlehem, PA:
"Hello, Cincinnati!"

man the singer from Killer does a note perfect brian johnson. kinda boring though. i'd rather hear krokus. um, maybe. and he totally ditches it for the 1984 album.

xpost:

when I saw the Who in Cincinnati (1975) Pete Towshend greeted the crowd w/ "Hello Detroit"

yeah, and then everyone died! wait, that was later.

no offense to anyone who knew someone who died. ever. anywhere.

jeezus, 11 people. i'd forgotten it was that many. even that wkrp episode about it was sad. and a weird thing to tackle on a sitcom.

the cincinnati who death stampede concert was in 1979. I was living in the detroit area by then but a couple of my friends attended & survived.

on a lighter note that Ten Years After comp I mentioned awhile back includes the entirety of Sssh, Cricklewood Green & Watt. pretty good albums overall, esp. CG.

the sorta post-new wave slant this thread has taken is interesting...

that's a great comp then! i like all those albums a bunch. especially cricklewood.

was digging the boys last night. i need all their albums. they had 4 i think. was looking for a picture of the boys album i was playing and apparently everett true wrote about it in the village voice in 2008! who knew? i don't really read the voice anymore.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/images/The-Boys-To-Hell-With-The-Boys-LP-cover.jpg

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2008/10/hugs_and_kisses_56.php

Reviewing that during the New Times takeover would've added a chit to your score leading up to being fired for having bad taste back in 2006-2007. It leans to the hard glam rock side of things from the punk era, containing a decent metallic cover of Love Sculpture's take on "Sabre Dance."

was listening to that love sculpture album the other day too! man, that has some choice guitar on there. that one long jam that is nothing but wall to wall guitars...whoooooo, my kinda record.

Listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer Live at Nassau Coliseum '78 right now. 2CD set, naturally. Think I still prefer Welcome Back My Friends..., but this is pretty choice aggro-prog.

Took about a week for Ted to publicly begin hating on the Wisconsin protesters. Pretty slow.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/22/nugent-hears-gop-dogwhistle-hates-on-wisconsin-protesters/

The Payola$ had a great song on the IRS Greatest Hits Vols 2 and 3 comp. "Jukebox" That was a great comp. Up there with Urgh A Music War and the Enigma Variations in my life.

Also, That z-rocks from the very first post in this thread brought back memories. They got a really big local push when they were on a 97 Rocks, or maybe 101 KLOL local comp back then. There are some live clips up on youtube. I guess it was a commercial aor band attempt at new wave. They fit in my mind with stuff like The Kings or Donny Iris, because I probably heard them around the same time.

Vie email. Their new album's just okay (they're kinda spinning their wheels these days, even more than they used to), but I bet they could take Ted in a fight:

DROPKICK MURPHYS SHOW SUPPORT FOR WISCONSIN UNION WORKERS:

BAND RELEASES STREAM OF NEW SONG “TAKE ‘EM DOWN” AND OFFER LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRT, WITH PROCEEDS BENEFITTING WORKERS' RIGHTS EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND

Dropkick Murphys have released an advance stream of their new song “Take ‘Em Down” in support of the thousands of Wisconsin union workers who are protesting the governor’s budget plan. The song is available here: http://www.dropkickmurphys.com/2011/02/22/take-em-down-the-dropkick-murphys-stand-with-wisconsin/ and http://www.seiu.org/2011/02/the-dropkick-murphys.php.
In addition, as part of their way of showing solidarity with this movement, Dropkick Murphys are working with the AFL-CIO, SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and have made the song available to be played at solidarity rallies across the country.
The band has also created a limited edition “Take ‘Em Down” t-shirt which will be available for sale at www.dropkickmurphys.com/merch/#takeemdown. Proceeds from the “Take ‘Em Down” t-shirt sales will benefit Workers' Rights Emergency Response Fund (https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4002/wi-response). Messages of support can also be sent to those fighting for their rights in Wisconsin via this link: http://action.seiu.org/page/s/wisconsin?via=ta-home.
The band, which has a long history of supporting workers rights and union causes, has released the following statement: “Dropkick Murphys would like to take a moment to acknowledge the struggles of the working people of Wisconsin and to pledge our support and solidarity by releasing the song ‘Take Em Down’ from our upcoming album. We think it's appropriate at the moment and hope you like it...We'll see you in Wisconsin in a few days! The Dropkick Murphys Stand With Wisconsin!!!!!”
Dropkick Murphys will release their new CD Going Out In Style--which includes “Take ‘Em Down”--March 1 on their own Born & Bred Records (ILG).

They're naturals for it.

The protests have spread to Lansing, another thing to give Ted heartburn.

He's regularly hated on Ann Arbor and East Lansing, too, in interviews, anything having to do with college towns because that's where he thinks all the despised hippies and pot smokers live. So between the college towns and all the places that had or have auto-workers, plus all the inner city poor, that's pretty much about 70-80 percent of the populaton, right? He had to move to Texas. Someone should start a petition to make it illegal for him to use the "Motor City Madman" appellation when
he's in the state.

all the despised hippies and pot smokers

HAHAHAHA, who the hell does he think ever bought to his fucking records and concert tickets?

Exactly. The fans of Ted Nugent were not really into the straight edge, temperance and teetotalism thing.

Agreed. Nothing better than rolling one up and listening to "Tooth Fang and Claw" on the cans.

I'd tell y'all to see Nugent on Huckabee a few days ago on YouTube. But it just isn't any good. Eventually he plays the Star Spangled Banner in front of a tv screen image of a rippling flag. The camera pans to Huckabee holding his hand over his heart and the old people in the audience, the types who'd never be at any of the dumps he plays in during his summer tours. Plus he doesn't swear the air blue like he does in the wild which seems a bit of a cheat.

George, I'm not sure I have this straight, maybe you can clarify: you're not a fan of Nugent's politics, am i right?

No. Thought it was obvious because of this:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/category/ted-nugent/

Pretty eye-popping in its collection of Ted's irrational behavior and illogic. It continues to astound me that producers book him into places other than Fox, like CNN. Or that he gets hands-off treatment at dailies. Most of the people obviously have no idea how he really spends his time although it's all pretty public.

For example, the guy getting an award from the US Forest Service when he's spent the entire year insulting the government, calling for its overthrow, including attacking the people in state and national parks & recreation because of his hunting faux pas is surely cause for some astonishment and hilarity. And that's only a minor bit of it.

Let's see, he likes to insult people with education by telling them he didn't waste his time with college because he was learning things. Then he'll make a bone-headed factual error in the next sentence by claiming the concentration camp, Auschwitz, was created before the start of World War II. Or he'll go on about Martin Luther King and how he upholds the man's spirit while castigating his usual enemies in the most vituperative manner the next minute.

I don't make the stuff up. On YouTube the contrast between Ted as a young man, when he was headlining California Jam, and now is quite striking. At one point in the distant past he was far more polite and civil to others.

Im just joking with you Gorge, i agree with you, the guy is ludicrous. i really like his music, which is a painful dilemma.

And my favorite song of his, "Great White Buffalo", seems to be an anti-Western expansion, pro-environment, pro-Indian tract. The guy has certainly become really wacky.

Thought you might be. ;) And I still enjoy the old tunes. Then there's the rest of it, an abject lesson in how not to grow old.

What a governing body full of Ted Nugents actually looks like:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/25/montana-dental-floss/

On the amusing where-did-that-come-from side of expired hard rock, Black Rose, a group with Cher as the singer from 1980. Cher, teamed up with her new boyfriend -- Allmans sideman Les Dudek, and a bunch of studio hacks including help from two guys who'd get big in Toto.

It was on Geffen and it's definitely Eighties hard rock, presaging some of the stuff she would do on subsequent solo albums.

"Julie" is a metal chug about, I think, a lesbian lover. There's a video of the band doing it on Wolfman Jack's show on TV, a segment I never saw. She's very credible and it's something to see here
in front of a wall of Marshall stacks.

"Take it from the Boys" is the best tune, very LA and boogie, could have crawled off any number of more popular albums in the style.

There's even some sub-Benatar on here, easily pitched as backing for wild teen coming of age movies. Which she's a little long in the tooth for, at this point. Definitely xhuxk fodder. Momentarily enjoyable, was probably repackaged as a Cher solo album no one listened to at some point.

I remember seeing it in stores. You had to know Cher was on it since the cover didn't give much away. Haven't seen any copies in vinyl bins in a long time.

A fairly funny review is here:

http://divaincarnate.blogspot.com/2009/10/chers-black-rose.html

A new grab-bag of slurs aimed at the Wisconsin protesters:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/26/nugent-compares-wisconsin-protesters-to-al-capone/

Exceptional -- I would have never thought of comparing them unfavorably to Gaddafi, even as a joke.

Yeah, I found a copy of that Cher/Dudek Black Rose LP a couple years ago; liked it enough to keep it. Mentioned it in the post below; thought I had talked about it more on one of these threads, but I guess not:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

kinda wish this kraan album i'm listening to right now had a little dutch hard rock on it.

Know what you mean, Scott, but then again the only Kraan LP I've ever heard is Let It Out from 1975. They look very new wave on the back cover, or at least the guy (bassist Hellmutt Hattler I think) with big pink glasses does. Mostly I'd say they sound to me like a jazz fusion band -- lots of alto sax, lots of instrumentals, lots of keyboards. Though the side openers "Bandits In The Woods" and "Let It Out", where somebody with a German accent actually sings, are more catchy Kraut-prog hoedown dance music -- Kind of how I wish Dixie Dregs sounded. And there's some space music somewhere on Side Two. Have no idea whether this album is typical for them. But nah, there's little or no hard rock on it.

Original Mirrors and Bette Bright's solo LP are still in my stacks, but I never play them

I just played the Original Mirrors one -- 1980 post-Deaf School band of vocalist Steve Allen, who sounds way more pompous and humorless here than he had there. Pretty marginal overall: Music's a sort of a hack-level midpoint between early Costello/Attractions Farfisa-wave and early '80s MTV synth-pop, with brief spans of dub echo. The two songs with the word "boys" in the title are the only catchy ones: "Boys Cry" for its English Beat-style ska bounce, "The Boys The Boys" for its backup chorus shouting the title. Cover of Supremes' "Reflections" is just bleh. No hard rock. Bought it for $1 in December, and it's already outlived any possible usefulness.

Been spinning Howard Werth & The Moonbeams' 1975 King Brilliant since I found it for a buck last week, trying to figure out why Scott has called it one of his all-time favorite albums. Dave Marsh wrote once that "When Elton John formed his own record label (Rocket Record Company) in the '70s, he decided he needed a hard rock band." Only, these guys don't sound to me much like a hard rock band, except inasmuch as Elton's own early/mid '70s country-Stones mode (which half of this album sounds a lot like, all the way down to Werth's singing, unless I'm just hearing an uncredited Elton in the background) qualifies as hard rock. Like those cuts enough, as they go, but Elton did it a lot better. And when you get to the more eccentric singer-songwriter stuff -- i.e., the two longish side-closers, where the Moonbeams stretch out a little -- Elton did that better too, seems to me, and was no less weird about it, except he had a genius for tunes and hooks and, to my ears, Werth doesn't. I dunno, maybe I'd understand what's so oddball about Werth more (Scott had put him on his "bands that just...didn't...fit" thread) if I read the lyric sheet. Or maybe it will just take more listens. As is, I'm mostly hearing slightly more expansive than unusual softish folkish rock on the slower stuff (with a tiny pinch of "Telstar" in "Aleph"), and one okay Ziggy Bowie rip ("Fading Star") (Still, as I predicted, I still like it a lot more than the 1975 Neil Sedaka LP on the same label I'd paid a buck for a week earlier. Though I don't think this has anything as good as "Bad Blood," the duet Sedaka and Elton did together on that one.)

I suppose that was the follow-on to Audience which part of the stable of bands John's producer, Gis Dudgeon produced for Charisma. None of them rocked very much although Audience's House on the Hill album is interesting. These acts included Hookfoot. Hookfoot was supposed to be hard rock, too. They are. But only in a very laid back country-esque poor man's Neil Young kind of way.

i like hookfoot. caleb quaye was st the emp thing i just got back from. i didn't hear him talk though.

i always used to say that Audience were the poor man's Family. but i like both bands.

and i don't really know why i like that album so much, chuck. its just an emotional charge i get from it. its out of my hands. i can't describe it that well. i should be able to, right? i'll think about it.

i missed cheeta chrome at the emp thing! gorge you should have gone. you could have hung out with cheetah. and the dude from human switchboard.

caleb quaye [was at emp?]

Hookfoot's axe man was at EMP?! Blow me down!!

I've got a little bit of post-EMP regret today; happens every year I don't go, when I see people talking about what I missed. But I really can't justify the money and time outlay for the trek; just can't afford it. Am always amazed that so many freelancers can afford it every year. Last year in Seattle's the only year I actually went (because Xgau put me on a panel about music in the '00s, and they covered my hotel room); had an excellent time. But when it was over, it was over -- or, say, a few days later, anyway, when everybody stopped talking about it. And then I never even wound up seeing a video of my panel, which I was told would be coming. So it was almost like it had never happened, give or take the picture of me on the panel that somebody wound up posting to my Wikipedia page.

Anyway, I've decided to go back and start surveying all the early Angels/Angel City LPs on my shelf. (Angus Young, when I interviewed him in the early '90s: "They were a jug band when they played with us, and we done a little tour of South Australia, and they were just playin' things like the Big Bopper, 'Chantilly Lace.' And then they saw what we had going, and they figured maybe that was the way they should go.") So I started with the self-titled The Angels LP from 1977, which I gather is supposed to be the one album they made before they found their hard-rock footing. No jug-playing, and no '50s rock'n'roll covers, but the cover illustration of the greaser looking at his reflection is pretty Sha Na Na, and not much on the album rocks harder than lots of what you'd hear on commercial U.S. country stations in 2011. Pub rock, I guess, but not great pub rock. Guitar sound gets slightly more dense in "Goin' Down," "Dreambuilder," possibly "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again," the latter of which I think of as this album's signature hit, since they re-recorded it on Face To Face a few years later. "Can't Get Lucky"'s an okay ditty about about a guy who can't catch any breaks; "you didn't touch a woman until you were 19," etc. But the only song that really hints where the band's heading, heaviness-wise, is "Hot Lucy," good hot chugging Southern boogie somewhere in the neighborhood between ZZ and Brownsville Station.

Actually, I guess "Goin' Down" (only song the band didn't write) is a Jeff Beck Group cover, written by Don Nix, which would explain its thickish blues-rock plod. (Vanda & Young produced the album.)

I'm going to see Motörhead tonight, and they seem to be positioning themselves in a more hard rock rather than a metal direction on this tour: they've got Clutch (who've gradually become a stoner-boogie blooze-jam band over the last decade or so) and Valient Thorr (who do a sort of MC5-meets-Thin Lizzy thing) opening for them, and their own set list (via setlist.fm) is leaning heavily on the slower, bluesier side of their catalog: They're playing "Metropolis," "The Chase is Better than the Catch," and "Just 'Cos You Got the Power" on this tour. The latter song is a 1986 B-side that in its studio version is something like seven minutes long, with multiple extended guitar solos. They're also doing "Killed by Death" and "Going to Brazil," one of their more melodic songs. Is Lemmy mellowing out at 65? We'll see.

it was a lot of fun at the emp thing this year, chuck! i wish you and gorge could have come! and yeah it WAS really expensive since we brought the kids and all but we never go anywhere ever. we needed a break from the snow.

and my thing went really well. seemed like people dug it. it was nice to meet greil marcus. he was the moderator for my thing. and i got to thank him for his kind words about me in his marooned intro. and it was cool to meet david grubbs. he was on my panel. he was in one of my favorite bands when i was 17! boy, that feels like a long time ago.

i can send you two the thing i read if you are interested. just e-mail me. skotrok @ earthlink dot net

and the kids had a blast. they were bouncing up and down for four days. the tar pits. universal studio thing. they were flying.

and to be honest the two times that i went i really just went there to read. that was my focus. i didn't care too much about after the fact. i wrote both things to be read there and that was the end of it as far as i was concerned.

still haven't met xgau though. man, he is everywhere at these things though. he loves to ask questions, that's for sure. i dig that.

greil's thing on money songs was probably my favorite thing out of all the stuff i saw. he had this long moment where he talked about money changes everything by the brains and then cyndi lauper's version and it was one of the best music writing things i've heard in a long time.

also, chuck and gorge, i want you guys to save your pin money and come to the next emp conference - which is gonna be in new york - so that we can have our group panel entitled, *In Ted We Trust: The Music, Politics, And Heroic Folklore Of America's Last Honest Man*.

I pitched that. It got turned down.

Motorhead have been doing "Just Cause You Got the Power" for a while now. I've definitely seen them do it live a few times in the last several years.

Also, last time around they toured with Rev. Horton Heat, who are even less metal than Clutch.

Did a survey of unemployment in Michigan vs. arms manufacturing. Corporate headquarters for tank production is in Sterling Heights. Unemployment is very bad in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties, lots of public workers threatened with layoffs. Obama saved the auto industry. Paradoxically, Nugent has hated on the auto industry and union workers along with the rest of the GOP which views arms manufacturing as sacrosanct.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/02/28/economic-treason-middle-class-whacked-while-arms-manufacturing-flourishes-case-michigan/

Was going to deal with Nugent hating on Muslims and Obamacare again this week but he's repeating himself. I'm waiting for him to pull a Huckabee and rant about Obama spending his childhood in Kenya.

And from the country thread, xhuxk hipped me to Left Lane Cruiser, who I kind of like. One guesses they're from the heartland somewhere since they're on Alive.

Will definitely study that Michigan post -- I've got family in Sterling Heights (and lots more in Oakland County.)

And yeah, Left Lane Cruiser are from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since you mentioned them here, a couple things I've written about them (first a review of their new album):

http://www.rhapsody.com/left-lane-cruiser/junkyard-speed-ball#albumreview

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/03/the-blues-and-punk-have-a-sick-baby.html

Also, something I wrote a few years ago on their likewise blues-punk labelmates Black Diamond Heavies, whose organist guests on LLC's new album:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/11/black-diamond-heavies-and-mississippi-mudsharks-stomp-all-over-you.html

And oh yeah, another pretty good new album (CD-R, whatever) in the same general category of those bands: La Puta, by one Dick Destiny. My copy's in the car, and I'm not at the moment, so I might not get the titles exact, but my favorites so far are the Waco-and-La-Grange-depleted-of-prostitutes title track (very Marty Robbins or Gene Pitney, that one), the cover of smash 2010 Sunday morning politics talk show commercial break hit "That's Logistics," and the bonus track about Heevahavas (which I think is the same music as the earlier instrumental "Pennsy Redneck," but with words.) Lots of other good ones, though. Awesome guitar sound. Pretty sure "Ace Of Spades" is a Link Wray not Motorhead cover.

Encouraging pro-immigrant subtext to that title cut, too. (But no Brad Paisley covers, I don't think.)

Left Lane Cruiser, who I kind of like. One guesses they're from the heartland somewhere

Fort Wayne, IN. Havent heard their CDs, but I've seen them absolutely demolish small clubs twice (and I'm not generally all that big a fan of the 2-man band thing.) But these guys do it very well.

Argh, should have paid attention to chuck's reply, sorry.

(which I think is the same music as the earlier instrumental "Pennsy Redneck," but
with words.)

Heh, thanks but no. The Redneck song is a dobro tune mostly. Heevahava Overture is all electric, starts a boogie, delivers a two Keith Emerson jokes and a country bit.

I don't know how I want to distribute it. Pay tunecore whatever they want to send it around to the digital stores? Was thinking of putting it up as an archive on my server but -- this is a technical detail issue -- I'm not real fond of the mp3 conversions when compared with the wavs.

I guess Left Lane Cruiser must be improving. I liked one of the earlier songs, "Big Mama," quite a bit.

The Redneck song is a dobro tune mostly

Ha, I must not've been paying close attention to that one while driving; just made the connection because of the titles. Will revisit. Ditto "Heevahava"'s Keith Emerson parts, which I hadn't noticed.

Actually, the beginning of "Pennsy Redneck" always reminds me of "U.M.C." by Bob Seger for some reason. And the Emerson jokes (which I had noticed before, it turns out, just hadn't made a mental note of them) are pretty obvious, duh.

"Ace of Spades" is Link Wray. The other unmarked cuts are a short piece built off a famous section from the Mothers' "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" and "Fiscal Discipline Rock." The other unobvious cover is "Needle & Spoon" which is old Savoy Brown.

Free download of La Puta

http://www.dickdestiny.com/mp3puta.zip

<img src=http://www.dickdestiny.com/PutaA3xsmall.JPG />

Track numbers and with some art. If there's still an actual need for a tracklist, holler.

Free download of La Puta

http://www.dickdestiny.com/mp3puta.zip

http://www.dickdestiny.com/PutaA3xsmall.JPG

Track numbers and with some art. If there's still an actual need for a tracklist, holler.

Ha, just found this on line. Old article from my high school newspaper (which I didn't write):

This was originally published in the June 1978 issue of The Spectrum and was written by Carol Culbertson.

For those involved in painting "Welcome To The Grand Illusion" on the west side of the West Bloomfield High School gymnasium last month, suspensions and payment for the damage have become a great reality.
The three male students involved in the act are still serving 30-day suspensions. The are also required to split three ways the $90 sandblasting bill for the removal of the sign, before they return to school.
The vandals were suspected of committing the crime, according to Assistant Principal, John Coe. "Through scuttlebut, just rumors." The three were then apprehended and confessed to the crime. WBHS administrators, the students' parents, and the police, were involved in determining the disciplinary actions.
A police report was filed for the malicious destruction of property on the one student known to have done the actual painting.
The saying, "Welcome To The Grand Illusion" derived from the song of the same name by the rock music group STYX, was the subject of conversation among students, faculty and community members alike.
Principal Ted Cavin feels everyone is entitled to his opinion, but does not feel that the painting was the proper means of expression.
Coe was complimentary of the students who helped them catch the offenders, "They were concerned that our high school was marked up, which says something, generally, for our student body."

90 buck sandblasting bill. Hmmm, today they'd inflate that to $3,000 in an effort to get some extra dough in place of falling tax revenue. Courteous touch there, though. Today it would be off for a bracing life-ruining stay at a private sector-administered juvie prison.

i got arrested with some friends - i was around 12 - for spraypainting AC/DC on a railroad overpass. it was a popular spot to paint local high school pride messages and various satanic stuff. two hours prior the mayor of our town had provided a photo op for the local paper of him and others whitewashing the bridge/overpass and vowing to take a stand on graffiti. oops. they put us in a cell!

thanks, gorge! i will listen!

chuck is too shy to mention it, but he gets mentioned within the new novel by Bob Pfeifer. Bob being the founder of Human Switchboard.

I didn't even know until you told me, Scott! Hope he doesn't say anything rotten about me. (I never met him, I don't think. And I have only ever owned the Human Switchboard album on one side of a Fuji C-60 that Richard Riegel made for me years ago.)

By the way, if anybody cares, here are some new records with rock guitars on them that I've been liking, to some degree or other, this year. (Not "Past Expiry," but then neither are Left-Lane Cruiser or Dick Destiny)

The Dirtbombs – Party Store (In The Red) - Detroit garage band that I never cared about before covers Detroit techno classics, mostly from the '80s, on rock instruments; result is more or less Kraut-rock, or maybe '70s space-jazz fusion in the one cut that goes over 20 minutes

Cauldron – Burning Fortune (Earache) - Toronto NWOBHM revival; catchiest metal album I've heard in a long time, especially "Miss You To Death"; big leap in quality over their just-passable debut CD from a couple years back to my ears

Thompson Square – Thompson Square (Stoney Creek) - big-jangle pop-rock disguised as Nashville country, as George explained last night here:

Rolling Country 2011

Those Darlins – Screws Get Loose (Oh Wow Dang) - more sloppy garage-punk than sloppy cowpunk now; band could use way more dynamics, but lots of the songs are well-written and fairly hooky, and the three girls sing better than most sloppy garage punks

Woods Of Ypres – Woods 4: The Green Album (Earache) - supremely (unintentionally I think) silly goth-ish metal from Toronto; album apparently came out a couple years ago on a small label in Canada, but just getting Stateside release next month

Notekillers – We’re Here To Help (Prophase) - reformed no-wave-era instrumental surf/prog/psych/punk/math/metal/whatever guitar/bass/drums trio from Montgomery County, PA; the track "Modern Jazz" flashed me on MX-80 Sound this morning, and when I followed up the album (which the band sent me on red vinyl!) with Crack The Sky's debut album, the segue didn't sound completely ridiculous

Holy Grail – Crisis In Utopia (Prosthetic ’10) - newish L.A. NWOBHM/early-thrash revival outfit of White Wizzard's ex singer James Paul Luna; just got this even though it came out last year, but so far I'm liking it more than White Wizzard's full-length 2010 debut

Christian Mistress – Agony & Opium (20 Buck Spin ’10) -- Pacific Northwest band; Decibel put this at #29 in their Top 40 albums of 2010, though again I didn't hear it 'til this year; J. Bennett called it Motorhead/NWOBHM with rougher Fleetwood Mac vocals, apparently since there's a female singer. Only six songs, in maybe 35 minutes or so. I want to like it more than I do -- the production's too thin and blurry to put the singing and songs over (they need a bigger budget), but probably worth hearing if anybody likes, say, Crucified Barbara or Mensen.

Assume the more metal ones above have been mentioned on the Rolling Metal thread, but I don't read that very often, so...

loving the new notekillers! so good! and fierce too! they can show the kids how its done.

I like Cauldron, Holy Grail and Christian Mistress; I sorta like Woods of Ypres.

oh, and in the book, he has this part where barry manilow is talking about this shadowy rock writer cabal or something - the whole book is about some secret rock music conspiracy - and he mentions you along with a bunch of other people.

x-post

You should also check out Hour of 13's The Ritualist, which sounds like late '70s doom-rock/metal with a surprising Roky Erickson feel at times.

notekillers album is my favorite new rock record. though i haven't heard that many new rock records, so...

for some reason i just remembered seeing wanda jackson with that idiot jack white on letterman last night. it was like a bad dream. i always want to punch that guy when i see him on t.v. i don't know why. it felt like he had dragged wanda out of her bed and out of her house and kidnapped her and put her on t.v. is she in an old folk's home? i hope that dope doesn't have power of attorney or anything.

Oops, left out this one:

Dennis Coffey – Dennis Coffey (Strut) The old Detroit funk-rock guitar guy, who went Top 10 pop with his instrumental "Scorpio" on 1971. (I always used to play that in my bar DJ gigs when I was in New York.) Anyway, the the new album has various garage-soulish youngsters (from Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, Bellrays, Mayer Hawthorne) etc. taking vocal turns to help him cover old funk-rock songs by Westbound-era Funkadelic ("I Bet You") Parliament ("All Your Goodies Are Gone"), 100 Proof Aged In Soul ("Somebody's Been sleeping"), etc., and Coffey does a bunch of astronomical instrumentals with names like "7th Galaxy," "Plutonius," "Space Traveller." Album seems fairly spotty, but I'm definitely liking parts of it. Heaviest cut (like the more metal end of Cream) is probably "Only Good For Conversation" with Paolo Nutini, a Scottish singer I was under the impression was more a pop guy, but he does a good hard rock vocal here. Song was apparently first done by this late '60s Detroit cult act named Rodriguez who I've never otherwise heard, though I get the idea he got some kind of hipster following in recent years.

Btw, might be a stretch to call a few of those hard rock -- Those Darlins, especially, who just don't seem to have the chops for it, maybe Dirtbombs, a couple others. And not saying I'd necessarily recommend them to anyone on this thread, or that I'll even be returning to many of them as whole albums a lot myself (Cauldron and Thompson Square probably have the best shot at that); just saying I've gotten at least some enjoyment out of all of them, found them kinda interesting, whatever. Then again, of course I got them all free in the mail, so caveat emptor.

Still preferring old stuff these days, way more often that not. Been really liking Iceberg, 1974 solo debut by Deke Leonard, guitarist from Welsh band Man. Hard roots/pub/rockabilly influence of co-engineer Dave Edmunds shows most in "Diamond Head" and "A Hard Way to Love," which bookend side one. But on lots of the rest Leonard seems to going for Led Zeppish Celtic Delta blues twisted hard rock, with Plant-style squealing and everything, a sound done best in "Broken Ovation," which strikes me as both really tricky and pretty funny, I think on purpose. (Some woman calls him a graveyard, he calls her a school -- not sure I get the joke, if there is one, but I smiled anyway.) "The Ghost Of Musket Flat" is a really gorgeous three-minute British-folk-plus-mellotron instrumental, and on the album closer "7171 551" Leonard stretches out some hard pumping organ rock, and "Looking For A Man" is a gruff churner that repeats the title over and over to catchy effect. Like the album a lot more than the subsequent LP by him I've got, Kamikaze, or the one Man one I have, Rhinos Winos & Lunatics.

7171 551 is on a couple live Man recordings I have. Leonard made Man more rocking than they generally were. He also brought a wry very British sense of humor which you've noted. It offset the stoned hippie vibe. They really rocked when Cippolina wound up recording and playing with them.

excerpts from the hagar autobio!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/photos/exclusive-excerpt-surviving-eddie-20110304

"I had been waiting at 5150 studios for more than an hour when Eddie finally showed up. I hadn't seen him in a decade. He looked like he hadn't bathed in a week. He certainly hadn't changed his clothes in at least that long. He wasn't wearing a shirt. He had a giant overcoat and army pants, tattered and ripped at the cuffs, held up with a piece of rope. I'd never seen him so skinny in my life. He was missing a number of teeth and the ones he had left were black. His boots were so worn out he had gaffer's tape wrapped around them, and his big toe stuck out. He walked up to me, hunched over like a little old man, a cigarette in his mouth. He had a third of his tongue removed because of cancer and he spoke with a slight lisp."

Wow, I can't follow that, but was gonna say Man's Slow Motion, was some of kind of mid-70s cusp of late psych-boogie x studio roots pop--not polyester, but pretty crisp. Deke manages to effortlessly, appropriately gloss Lennon, Loudon Wainwright III (re both influences' high-pitched attitude), Roy Wood, other studio rats--including his bandmates, who have some pretty juicy arrangements (drummer went on to Rockpile, etc). Also, you started this thread with a bouquet for 70s Allan Toussaint, whose 2009 set The Bright Mississippi is a grand and sly expedition, just AT and his rockness checking out the jazz world, along with Nicolas Payton, Marc Ribot, Brad Meldau, Joshua Redman, and an unflappably agile rhythm section. And don't hastily hate on Jack White. The Wanda Jackson album is reet, as I think Toussaint would agree; here's something about it from Rolling Country:
I'm initially amazed by Wanda Jackson's new album with Jack White & co., which has no prob spinning rockabilly, New Orleans, calypso, country, gospel, boogie woogie, an overall "Rainy Day Women" x Zep feel which doesn't mess up the gospel, even ( honoring Stax's own approach to remakes helps). Can well imagine Jace Everett getting into it, and not totally sure a couple of songs aren't his. Gets better as it goes along too (link to stream which has since expired)

― dow, Friday, January 21, 2011 3:03 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm glad they're streaming that, since I heard "Shakin' All Over" last night on the radio and liked it a lot. It's a big production number, sort of like what the White Stripes did with "Conquest" only more show-bizzy. This Letterman performance has a fine White guitar solo.

― dr. phil, Friday, January 21, 2011 4:58 PM

Yeah, although her voice seemed a bit small for the live sound, though I may have been influenced by the fast that she was at least a foot shorter than the musicians she was surrounded with. "Shakin' All Over" is kinda hard to pull off live (that "oh-oh-vuhhh", unless you're Roger Daltry on Live At Leeds, for inst), though better on the album, still not nearly the best track.
-dow Also check his Zep guitar bounce all over The Secret Sisters non-album single of "Big River", where he provides a sturdy trampoline for the shapenote-bred Sisters' tuneful shout (several posts of it on YouTube)

not polyester, but pretty crisp Also mellow at times.I keep thinking the title is Flow Motion. Overall, not too much more than a moonlight mile from formerly late night FM's emerging mainstream, though apparently program directors did not agree.

Those pictures of Eddie were astonishing in their hideosity. In fairness, they must have dried him out at one point because around 2007 he was posing for Guitar Center promotion with a haircut and a new set of false choppers.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2007/08/slave-labor-guitar-versus-eddie-van.html

I liked the part where Hagar claims Eddie said he cured his cancer by cutting off slivers of his tongue, liquefying it, and injecting it back into him. Could've been true. Some quack cures for various things, down through the years, did stuff like that. When my did had advanced cancer he went to Bermuda for something using a similar idea. They took out blood, concentrated something from it, and put it back in him. The treatment had been profiled on 60 Minutes as a suppressed cure. It turned out to be quackery, my father died there. The clinic was later shut down. (He would have died, anyway.) Anyway, point being -- as nuts as it sounds there have been 'treatments' as odd as that.

Pulled out that Black Rose LP with Cher singing, inspired by Gorge's post up above. Agree "Take It From The Boys" is the best track -- shout chorus in that sounds glam-rock to me, almost like they were going for a Suzi Quatro type sound. (A year or two later, you could easily imagine Joan Jett doing it, or maybe Benatar in her Sweet-covering mode.) Also thought "You Know It," a duet with presumably Dudek and cute synth parts added in, was very catchy. Album as a whole had more metal than I'd noticed before -- yeah, "Julie," and "88 Degrees" has a real heavy riff; only problem is that the band's inconsistent about keeping the sound rocking for an entire track. Definitely prefer it all, though, to the big Cher quasi-rock hits that I remember from later in the '80s. (Don't prefer it to her best '70s hits, though.)

Played Mother's Finest's Another Mother Further from 1977 today too; I know we've talked about them on past Expiry threads. Supposed to me their heaviest record, or one of them, I think. No photos of the band on the cover, probably so rock fans and potentially AOR programmers wouldn't know they were mostly black people; album only got to #134 (their second highest charting ever), so the plan must not have worked too well. Cool that one of the most rocking tracks is their cover of Smokey Robinson's "Mickey's Monkey". (Don't get how it can be "the blueprint for the near identical 'Custard Pie'," though, as Popoff surmises in his '70s book, when the Zeppelin song was already two years old at the time.) Wonder if "Dis Go Dis Way, Dis Go Dat Way" the most blatant disco move any '70s metal band ever did, especially since they follow it with "Hard Rock Lover." (MF did disco on other LPs, I know, but probably not with this much kick to it.)

Actually I hear more Aerosmith than Zeppelin in their sound on this album, anyway. And I'm not having any luck searching, but I think in the past George has mentioned Iron Age from 1981 (which I've still never heard) as their really heavy one. (Popoff calls that one "shocking pure metal," so I guess he agrees.) 1979 live album -- also never heard by me -- is said to be hot too, apparently.

And ha, in 1992 I see they put out an album on RCA called Black Radio Won't Play This Record -- also heavy, Popoff says.

Okay, found this from George: "Most memorable is their gluing Led Zep's 'Custard Pie' onto the Miracles' 'Mickey's Monkey' -- a humorous lawsuit trap apparently Jimmy Page was smart enough not to take. Nevertheless, it's a great hard rock treatment." That makes more sense. More:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

Also didn't click for me until now (though George had pointed it out on that old thread -- I'm slow) that the guitarist, Moses Mo (supposedly from funk capitol Dayton, oddly enough -- rest of MF were Atlantans) was one of the band's two white guys. (I've got the debut LP from 1976, which also has some hard rock on it and has their photos on the back; guess I just never looked close.) Wonder how hard it was to keep him in check on their more soul/disco albums (which never charted very high either, though Wiki says a couple singles made Billboard's black chart.)

I had Iron Age. It is the heaviest, taking on a van Halen sound with guitar out front, a move that was a fad back then. It is not their best record. The tunes are forgettable and nothing on it really rises to the quality of the first two records. When they did stuff that was more to an all disco or funk record, they were poorer for it. When they went whole hog heavy metal they were poorer for oti. I suspect both were after urging by label types to try something more generic it attemtps to pick up a bigger less-varied audience. Tom Werman's production, both on the first two, was also good for them.

The subtext of "Mickey's Monkey" remains hilarious. I can imagine the person who came up with it in the studio knew full well a bunch of schnooks would hear it and immediately go: [in outraged dumby tone] "Hey, they're ripping off Led Zeppelin!" With even more outrage when it was noticed most fo the band was black.

Apparently it's been too long since I played Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come. I was in an exotic petstore today (there are a couple of them within bicycle distance from here -- this one has a live two-toed sloth named Sophie, but she's not for sale), and "Lake Isle Of Innersfree" was playing and I was thinking that I totally loved it but couldn't place who it was. (Best guess was Uriah Heep, but I was pretty sure that was wrong.) But then "Pumped Up" came on, and I was all, "oh yeah, duh," and I complimented the cashier guy on his good taste. Pretty sure I had never heard Sir Lord Baltimore in a store of any kind before.

Came home and blasted Girlschool's Screaming Blue Murder, which I also hadn't listened to in too long. Can't think of many bands that Martin Popoff underrates more. "Hellrazor," "It Turns Your Head Around" -- This is basically what I wish Christian Mistress sounded like.

Christian Mistress brought it pretty hard at the scion rock Fest yesterday -- according to our very own Nate Carson, their EP is more of a glorified demo than a good indicator of their sound, and I believe it. Don't lose patience with them just yet.

I may actually check them out at SXSW a couple weeks from now, to be honest. And yeah, "demo" sounds about right, for that record -- like I said above, they strike me as a band who might definitely benefit from a real recording budget.

what are you going to see at sxsw? i don't even know who is gonna be there cuz i never read all that spam i get.

Christian Mistress, St. Vitus, Pentagram, Steve Arrington of Slave fame (speaking of Dayton funk), 70something Southern soul deity Bobby Rush playing on the 18th floor of a Hilton hotel -- well, I might check out all those, if I can make myself stay up late enough, and (more important) if the magazine that's been asking me to review some shows actually gets me a a badge. (The Rods are playing, too! Same time slot as Bobby Rush, though, and he wins. Also think Roky Erickson fronting the Meat Puppets are the same time as both of those shows, too, with Bubble Puppy as their opening band. Agalloch vs. the Bangles on Thursday might come down to a flip of a coin, though. Haven't decided whether I'll bother with the Men Without Hats reunion.)

that sounds like fun stuff. i love the bubble puppy of old. is it fun to watch stuff during this or is it just a madhouse? i guess it could be a fun madhouse if everyone is in a really good mood.

Is going to see live music ever fun?? It's work! (Just kidding. Sort of.) Anyway, I'm guessing it'll be kind of a nerve-wracking zoo, though how many SXSWers would even know who Steve Arrington or Bobby Rush or the Rods are? But I didn't have a badge in my two previous Marches in Austin, though, so I wouldn't know for sure. Last year and 2009 I just caught a few free afternoon sets, that's it. Which were actually pretty fun, for the most part, though public transportation here is kind of a joke. Think I'm actually going to try to drive this year, and park in an out-the-way 'hood then walk from there to downtown.

i almost put on a live rods album tonight. but i ended up playing uriah heep instead.

i like seeing music around here. mellow. never a ton of people for the things i want to see. and i have live music in the store. which is really cool if you are lazy like me. i don't even have to get out of my seat at work!

they strike me as a band who might definitely benefit from a real recording budget.

Or just someone who knew what they were doing when recording loud music. And able to persuade the band members that studio isn't like live. The worst results are often always when the band goes in and plows it out like a live set, then pastes on fix-ups. Nugent didn't have a really righteous sounding record, for example, until Werman did the work.

http://popdose.com/the-producers-ted-nugent-babysits-a-meaty-free-for-all-and-tom-wermans-greatest-misses/

This is interesting because it describes stuff that probably happens mostly only in Nashville now.

Interestingly, Leann Kingwell was in LA for a few days about a month ago. She told me in e-mail she was going to Miami to record until the beginning of March.

xp Yeah Scott, for me, laziness has a lot to do with it. Seeing live music was cool when I was at the Voice, and I could just walk a few blocks and sit down on a barstool and watch. Also didn't mind being out so late back then. But driving a half hour, finding parking, then having to watch my beer intake because I'm going to drive home after midnight? Not so inviting, usually.

Wound up playing Precious Metal's Right Here Right Now tonight, first time in years -- how's that for a blast from the Stairway past? Held up better than I'd've guessed, too, though I still wonder who Mercury would've marketed it to in 1985, if it was marketed at all -- Cyndi Lauper fangirls who liked one Ratt song, or something? Weird that the lead cut, "This Girl" (also the first of three named on the sticker on the cover, so presumably a single or focus track) might actually be the least hard rocking track on the record. Also never noticed before that probably the two punchiest songs and my two favorites, "Girls Night Out" and Bo Diddley-beat softcore-pornish rocker "Cheesecake," were actually co-written by the guitarist Mara Fox, not (unlike most other cuts) by singer (and Metal Mike pal and former Europop hitmaker in Promises) Leslie Knauer.

Speaking of Stairway, I found a reissue of the first two Hades records (Resisting Success and If at First You Don't Succeed). Fund speed metal stuff. Might do a write up on them for my column on the decibel blog, but I'm not really in the mood to listen to them. In fact, I'm not really in the mood to listen to any metal whatsoever after seeing so many bands yesterday. Anyway, going back to Christian Mistress for a moment, I hear much more Warlock than Girlschool (and I would definitely go see Roky Erickson fronting The Meat Puppets).

I would totally re-buy that Hades LP in Stairway if I saw it for a dollar! (I'd listen to a reissue too, probably.)

xp Also, I don't think I ever figured out why Leslie Knauer is wearing a pink T-shirt for an apparent (fake?) band called the Killer Poodles, who also get their (fake?) logo on the back cover of the actual Precious Metal album. (Just googled it, to no avail.) Nice parallel, though, to Metal Mike's Fried Abortions T-shirt on the back of Back From Samoa: Who the heck were they, and why'd it take over three decades to wonder that out loud? (Okay, just checked my copy of Volume: The International Discography For the New Wave. Says "cut on Red Spot - subterranean rec SUB-15 us comp Lp '81," if that's any help.

Wound up playing Precious Metal's Right Here Right Now tonight, first time in years -- how's that for a blast from the Stairway past? Held up better than I'd've guessed, too

Be honest now. It's not a bad record. I flipped a bit over it on issue but while it still sounds
good it's a pop metal version of the Bangles pre-Bangles. Really. It's metal on the title cut and the guitars are Marshall-loaded but it does not punch your face. "Cheesecake" is a bit of novelty. Sounds to me now like the singer's going through the motions on it. What she really liked to sing was "Emily" and "This Girl," soft pop tunes pumped up for this as hard rock. Nothing wrong with that but it's not the screaming hard rock thing. For the time the record still had audacity. Later albums got harder. The last one tried to travel on a Springsteen cover. Nope.

Right Here Right Now was buried in reverb. For the time it doesn't measure up to anything Girlschool, which I'm thinking your listening to, triggered this. Girlschool -- better songwriting, allowed to be sledgehammer and gritty, themselves in oily denim and sexy in a homely way, supported and appropriate for the NWOBHM. When they went glam they did so effectively. Attracted Slade's Holder/Lea for production on Play Dirty, did Mud for Nightmare at Maple Cross. When they tried to break in the US and got girly and LA they made their worst record.

Precious Metal were stuck by being too early. The songwriting fit the demographic that bought the Bangles. And they were at the beginning of pre-hair metal, unlikely to be embraced by the man crowd trying to look like girls. Vixen, who competed with them in LA, came along a couple years later and succeeded for one album, most of it written by others. Having interviewed both bands I can tell you this was a sore point among many other things. Neither really emerged triumphant. The girls took it in the shorts. In England, Girlschool were allowed to rise to their occasion. Which says something about the respect for the underclass in Blighty vs. here.

Precious Metal were set up with Keith Olsen at one point. The idea to break them as hitmakers when Olsen was producing lots of hitmakers. That failed totally. The recordings were never released.

I saw them at the Cat Club opening for Extreme when everyone was abashed by the funk metal thing, including you, right? This was a terrible gig. Extreme were awful. Precious Metal was good but tired.

And I have a hard time thinking of Roky Erickson and the Meat Puppets combination as being anything other than pandering. Why would anyone think it would be a good idea for a band known for collapse because of drug use and mental illness would be a good support for someone famously known for trouble with drug use and mental illness?

Other than as a freak show?

I saw the Meat Puppets many times. They were never any good as a classic rock band. They certainly did not play in the style which would be appropriate for the records Roky Erickson made with the Aliens, which is the meat of his catalog.

Is this meant as a joke or set up as a big car wreck? People in Nashville could support Roky Erickson. I'll predict that it will get good lying pity-party reviews because no one will have the nerve to actually report on it.

Yeah, I didn't mean to disparage that Precious Metal LP -- It is a real good record, way more consistent and catchy than just about any pop-metal from that time. Guess I just didn't know if I'd still feel that way when putting it on for the first time in years, and I did! And the fact that it probably makes less attempt to be tough or bad-ass than any "metal" album ever (including other ones by women) is actually really cool. I've always liked that song "Emily" -- always detected a certain woman-loving-woman subtext with that one, though I was probably reading way too much into it. What gives "Cheesecake" its kick for me is actually its fat Diddley beat more than the novel come-hither stuff. "This Girl" always seemed a little off to me, somehow, still does, but there's no doubt that Leslie is enjoying herself singing it. I've also still got the second album on Chameleon from 1988, That Kind Of Girl (which made my Top 10 the year it came out) on CD, and a 21-song best of CD that came out in 1998, What You See Is What You Get -- guess I kept that mainly for "Mr. Big Stuff," which I always liked.

As for the funk metal fad, I never got into it that much (who else is in Stairway? Lock Up way down at #470, I'm not sure what else), but yeah, I did bizarrely overrate Extreme back then -- in fact, at #87 I doubt there's an album I overrated more than Pornograffiti in my metal book. Really jumped the gun on that bloated thing, and have had no desire to hear it for decades now, can't imagine that'll change in the forseeable future. Though if I saw their '89 debut for a buck, I might pick that up; vaguely remember that one being a more straightforwad pop-metal album. Could be wrong, though.

I wouldn't have much hope for Roky with Meat Puppets, either. Neither of them have made any music I've wanted to hear more than once since the mid '80s; never really cared about the Meat Puppets after their third album, and I saw them a bunch back then too. And right, when they supposedly went "hard rock" (and people started comparing them to ZZ Top, which didn't make much sense) is right about when they started boring me. As for Roky Erickson, he's one of those guys, like Alejandro Escovedo, who seems to be revered here in Austin way more for his legend than for actually still making good records. A real boring one he did with this indie band Okkervill River won the Statesman's local-critic album of the year poll last year; Escovedo won the year before. Austin definitely loves its survivors, plus of course Roky also gets predictable condescending indie-rock bonus points for having been a nutcase and lived to tell about it.

And oh yeah, that's cool about Leanne Kingwell recording again. I'd kind of lost touch with her in the four or five years since Show Ya What came out. Has she put out anything since, do you know?

Coincidentally, speaking of tough Aussie gals, I played Divinyls' Temperamental this morning. From 1988, five years after what I've always assumed was their one solid album (their debut), three years before their only hit "I Touch Myself," by which time I get the idea they weren't even really trying to sound like a rock band anymore. (An uneducated guess, maybe -- not sure I ever even heard the album that's on; also have no memory of hearing What A Life! from 1985, which Mike Chapman apparently produced and had a low-charting single called "Pleasure and Pain.") Anyway, guitars on the 1988 one are crunchy and tuneful, but otherwise songs and hooks aren't really there, outside of a great vicious hooting and cackling gender-switch cover of Syndicate of Sound's "Hey Little Girl." The rest of the album is okay, soundwise; the songs just don't stick, and often even seem to deflate a little whenever Christina Amphlett starts doing her quirky hiccup-singing thing. Guess "Dirty Love" and slightly new wavey side-closers "Dance Of Love" and "Run-A-Way Train" come closest; railroad rhythm helps the latter.

I always think this 1980 Warners LP by The Tazmanian Devils (Californians not Aussies, despite being marsupials) is going to rock me harder than it does. They look like new-wave-bandwagon-jumping hard rock dudes on the cover, and Tazmanian Devils are real feisty critters. But mostly they just sound like maybe a slightly louder version of Squeeze doing white reggae, about as expertly as modern jam bands do it, which is to say not very. Their new wave has about as much kick as Billy Joel's. One song is obviously a "Not Fade Away" rewrite (another Diddley beat), which is okay, but the only ones that convincingly get un-mellow are fast talker "West Coast," which could almost be Tonio K or the Tubes, and sorta Clashy/sorta classic-rockish "Pressure."

"also have no memory of hearing What A Life! from 1985, which Mike Chapman apparently produced and had a low-charting single called "Pleasure and Pain."

i always liked that album. pleasure and pain was probably the first song i heard by them. it was a big college radio favorite.

who else is in Stairway? Lock Up way down at #470, I'm not sure what else),

Errrr...Faith No More, I guess. (I apologize for that.) Probably a couple other bands on the cusp too, maybe.

Don't think Leanne Kingwell has had any more records although she may have recorded. Go to her website and see the photo now. Big change! Along with what comes out of the speakers, a rewrite of one of her old tunes, which I assume is part of what she's now working on.

http://www.leannekingwell.com/

And my recurring use of Guitar Center as a metaphor for the broken US economy.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/03/07/made-in-china-guitar-center-catalog-crap-stories-about-military-gains/

"we care a lot" was as far as i went with faith no more. catchy tune.

so you can pre-order the barry richards dvd collection. don't know if i will, but the footage looks so cool. alice cooper, humble pie, rory gallagher, bob seger, etc.

http://www.barryrichardsshows.com/pages/home.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv9dBcTlQa8

Excerpts from an awesome Letter To The Editor in a 1986 issue of Creem Metal I just uncovered yesterday (in which issue I also wrote a scathing live review of Black Flag that wound up pissing off Rollins enough for him to write a letter to the magazine himself.) Anyway, I am not Stevie Stuka, I promise:

MAN WHO EVIDENTLY KNOWS NOTHING OF METAL WRITES, ED. PRINTS FOR HUMOR VALUE

Dear Incompetent Dogbrains:

Boy those zany goofs at HRV!...I wish they'd cut back on the Ratt/Crue/W.A.S.P. stereotype-stuff and put in more renegade bands (in this ish they got a restrospective on the Dictators and a--no black metal jokes, now!--bad brains write-up [great caption: "Off mah stage, honkey!"] You'd never see nothing like that in Hit Self Parody in a million years). Also they oughtta put in more articles about women, instead of this little box in the corner stuff. And I'd rather see vinyl stuff instead of video reviews (but then I'm a pre-MTV grouch who's sick of pouting prettyboy bands and dullsville vogue twerps, so of course that's how I feel.) HRV is a step in the right direction and hopefully will keep improving and subvert the living shit outta this scene and maybe even cause CREEM's own METAL rag to join in and become something more than a vehicle for Dave Di's contemptuousness and self-aggrandizing bullshit (which is nearly as noxious and pointless as the music of Slayervenomexodus and all that other black metal shit).

Fat chance, right? Dunno, I just can't make sense outta your jive turkey rigid genre nonsense. Why is it that BOC's debut can be considered a heavy metal classic when most of the songs on it aren't even epecially loud, yet Mission Of Burma can sound like the end of the world on nearly every track? People look at you as though you just wee-wee'd on the Pope if ya try to file them under heavy metal. Or news about the band that's considered to be the flamin' epitome of heavy metal, ol' Lude Zeppelin, who spent 75 percent of their vinyl output playing mandolin music to mummified Hobbit fetishists but Siouxsie & the Banshees aren't considered heavy metal because they don't buzzbomb guitars every second they're onstage? Huh? Do you see any logic in this?

As for the ever-so-amusing cliche hoo-hah, answer me this one: How, pray tell, could the term heavy metal become anything but a cliche when it is only applied to bands that have a certain image and dress a certain way? Back in the ooooolden days, anybody who played loud got called heavy metal whether it was the Stooges, MC5, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper or whoever...but now, of course, the term is only applied to bands that look or act a certain way and maybe play loud (Autograph, for instance, don't exactly shred my eardrums, y'dig?) While other bands (like Flipper or Husker Du or Mission Burma) that woulda been deemed heavy metal had they started 15 years ago, are instead filed under art thrash or some pointless-but-hip term. And the Stooges and MC5 have been retroactively re-labeled proto-punk, y'know, that term that wuz inspired by the infamous Stooges LP, Protopunk K.O., which allegedly influenced Husker Du while they were recording their own Postpunk Circus EP, nyuk nyuk nyuk. A ramblin' rose by any other name would still destroy your brain...so what's the point of all the word game bullshit, huh, kids and how in holy hell did it come to pass that people think heavy metal and hard rock are two separate species o' noise?! (I always thought they both meant the same thing, silly ol' goof that I am!) Boy, ya learn sumthink' new every day in this wacky world of ours, don't ya?

Stevie "Samurai" Goo Goo Muck Stuka (a.k.a. Paula Pierce's Pet Nauga),
Dover Beach, CA

P.S. Put me and Richard Riegel and Peter Davis in charge of yer METAL rag and we'll kick Muttly Spue's collective as from here to Siberia in two seconds flat!!!!!

-------------------------------

Anyway, he obviously overates Husker Du and Mission Of Burma (which wasn't hard to do back then), and it never even crossed my mind to put Siouxsie & the Banshees in Stairway (maybe I should have? never been much a fan), and it's annoying how he spells so many words wrong on purpose, but I still have a feeling I might've stolen a riff or two from the guy. (I think Peter Davis might've had the Underground Metal column in the mag before I inherited it and changed its name to "Selectric Funeral," but I'm not sure. Dave Di would've been CREEM editor Dave DiMartino, not Diamond Dave Roth, though he might apply to that same sentence. Don't recall at all what HRV was -- apparently another metal magazine, but I have no idea what those initials could stand for.)

I'm betting HRV might mean RIP. It started around '86. The only other mags that covered heavy metal/hard rock were Circus (it's sister mag, Raves, which probably had been killed by '86), Hit Parader -- which is obviously Hit Self Parody, and Kerrang which was hardly available commonly in the US. That's my bet, anyway.

Scott (whose EMP paper about selling records was awesome and hilarious and everybody should read it if they haven't already by the way) is gonna be bummed by this, but I think I really overstated the worth of that new Notekillers LP above. The one cut I compared to MX-80 (sans vocals or words), "Modern Jazz," does seem pretty cool to me, but it's also the only cut that seems to have much swing to it. The rest is static art guitar noise stuff -- mostly reminds me of a compacted version of old Glen Branca, or an instrumental version of very early Sonic Youth, though "Paper" might have some subliminal "Train Kept A Rollin" in its guitar line. Probably a little surf music here and there, too. But no matter what I said before, these guys have no more in common with Crack the Sky than the Pope does.

Was listening to Moontan, the Golden Earring LP with "Radar Love" on it, the other day, and finally realized why some people compare them to Jethro Tull sometimes -- duh, sometimes they use flutes. But the flutiest track, "Big Tree Blue Sea," actually reminds me way more of Hawkwind regardless. And "Vanilla Queen" was way more techno-synth rock than I remembered -- maybe that's a Pink Floyd thing, but I've never liked Pink Floyd much and this sounds great. Really, parts of that track almost sound like techno music, decades early. (So maybe they were Kraftwerk fans after all.) And of course "Candy's Going Bad" was metal enough for the Godz to cover it a few years later. And as I think Popoff pointed out once, the singer really does sound a lot like Roger Daltrey sometimes.

Later had my head kicked in by Rose Tattoo's Assault And Battery, and realized I still don't know what a Manzil or a Dunkirk are.

Did learn on Metal Mike Saunders' Wiki page, though, that the Fried Abortions were actually his own side-project band, in San Francisco from 1980-'82. And then they later "changed two members and their name to Lennonburger," how about that.

"The rest is static art guitar noise stuff -- mostly reminds me of a compacted version of old Glen Branca, or an instrumental version of very early Sonic Youth"

yeah, no, this is true! but i think that's what i like about it. i love how the guitar sounds. it does rock in a big way for me though. maybe i just haven't listened to branca and sonic youth in so long that this is really sounding good to me. i like playing it loud. i've been playing the old notekillers stuff and the new stuff and they go really well together. there is a common thread. and they were making sonic youth noises before sonic youth!

Dunkirk -- France 1940 Hitler/Wehrmacht bungle, one of the hinge points of WWII. Hitler's panzer divisions had cut off the British army in France and pinned it against the coast. The only port of evacuation on the channel was Dunkirk. The British civilian navy sallied to evacuate the Tommies. It coincided with a pause ordered by Hitler to the high command not to drive into Dunkirk but to leave it to the Luftwaffe. The German general staff regarded this as a grievous mistake. It was one of many in which they did not override the Fuhrer. It led to them being on the losing side.

Because of that decision the British army escaped from France to fight again. It left its equipment behind but the manpower was what was key. Guns, artillery, ammo and armor could be replaced. Had the British army been caught, it's likely the Battle of Britain, which the Brits won, would have never been fought and the UK would have sued for peace.

One of the critical points in WWII.

You'll probably want to dig up the Golden Earring live album. That, Moontan and Switch (which was minimal compared to MT) were the only things which stood a chance in the US market despite the band's continued crafting of sophisticated and unique hard rock well into the Eighties. In retrospect I'm not sure who was more effective -- them or Focus. Focus imitated Tull briefly too, particularly on their debut. One famous hit, like Radar Love, but not quite as high in the charts, Hocus Pocus. While rendered into history as a novelty tune because of the yodeling it's really a killer hard rock instrumental.

Focus' Moving Waves<i/> is a decent album. But their great progressive heavy blues rock experiment record is the double set, [i]Focus 3, produced by Mike Vernon. Which went mostly unheard.

So anyway, linguistically "Dunkirk" references can mean any of two things depending on the context. From the good guy perspective, it's the snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat. From the POV of view of the bad guys, the beginning of the turning of the tide even if they don't recognize it.

For example, Hitler and the Wehrmacht would continue to achieve great strategic but not war turning victory until Kursk in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1943, even after Stalingrad. Stalingrad was followed by a German counteroffensive led by a genius named Erich von Manstein. He restored parity on the eastern front and returned the initiative to the German army.

Anyway, none of this is generally known here. There aren't any equivalent battles of maneuver and size in US history.

Why am I talking about this?

I suppose for the sake of the Brits we could also speak of the first and second battles of el Alamein in 1942, won in both instances by the Brits. In the first battle, Auchinleck stalled Erwin Rommel. In the second, Montgomery won a victory that history has determined broke the back of the Afrika Korp in North Africa.

Also see <A HREF="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Tobruk+movie&aq=f&aqi=g3g-m2g-v5&aql=&oq=";>old lame war movie, "Tobruk."</A>

The top two items are simply flabbergasting:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/category/ted-nugent/

How did someone like this wind up being influential in 2011 US of A? Good examples of why we're a regular butt of jokes in England, I imagine.

Fat white guy with the shakes ponders the wisdom of Ted Nugent on baiting.

Didn't have this ready last week but for those who d/l'd La Puta, if you made a CD here's a
one-sheet .pdf. If you print it out, it's cropped so that with a scissors you can have a
nice cover. Print it on glossy paper it will look even nicer.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/PutaCDonesheet.pdf

I like the Notekillers best when they have some rhythmic bonus--yeah, swing or something--like with the conga player sitting in on their comp's live track (the comp is the one to start with, but both are worth checking, if Scott's latest take appeals). Somewhat sinuous divebombing "Eyelash" is my fave on We're Here To Help. David First can do all kinds of things; the orchestral "Thought You Said Sherbert" (based on a theme by Schubert)should be an Oscar-winning soundtrack climax for a vampire Wuthering Heights or something like that. Lots of good Roky performances on the DVD version of the doc You're Gonna Miss Me. More recently, Austin City Limits presented him having no prob fronting "two bands put together plus Billy Gibbons, " as he described it. Most recently, a live set with a boring alt-rock band, but he was good there too.

Hard to believe the Notekillers are still being discussed here.

Almost kills any discussion of anything else when that's a standard. C'mon now. boys. It's like going off on a poor man's MX-80 Sound thing without cluing in the youngers as to the marginal aspects.

I was going to speak about Tsar still being around and listening to McFly doing Beatles/Beach Boys stuff utterly rejected here but ... when there's the Notekillers what is there to say?

Ha ha, sorry I brought them up! (Hey, at least I didn't mention Kultur Shock, whose new album I've actually been way more obsessed with, despite it sounding like an unsavory-on-paper combo of Gogol Bordello, Rachid Taha, System Of A Down, and my wife says Sepultura.) (Oops.)

Tsar are still around? (I still have their first CD -- I think it's their first one -- and a 45 called "Straight"/"The Future In Disguise" around here somewhere.) Honestly don't know if I've ever actually heard McFly, who were huge in England a few years ago, right? Or nearly huge anyway.

Still listening to piles of old hard rock stuff, but I got the uncorrected proofs of my best-of book back Friday, and I'm trying to focus on proofing, as much as I can in the window until SXSW starts. (Already can't wait 'til it's over, to be honest.)

Okay, real quick shorthand: Decided Angel City's Dark Room (despite three or so great songs) isn't as good as Face to Face; Crack The Sky's Safety In Numbers (despite a couple really good hard rock tracks and sufficient Floyd/late-Beatles artsiness elsewhere) isn't as good as their first two before Palumbo left; Mother's Finest's first album is even better than their second one; and Golden Earring's '79 Grab It For A Second is way more four-square/straightforward rock (reminds me of Stones and even Mott sometimes) compared to what they'd been doing a few years earlier, and the title track pulls off its rock-disco real good.

(Also, fwiw, if anybody cares, should mention that beneath those more contemporary/trendy surface indicators, I'm detecting plenty of '70s hard prog on that Kultur Shock record. Bet they're big Zappa fans.)

i actually agree that notekillers don't really belong on this thread despite the fact that they were a very loud and chaotic marginal guitar band from the 70's - hey wait why don't they belong here? - but i will clue the youngers in a hundred times if it means that they check out the new album, cuz i think its great. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. as the kids like to say.

xp Actually,looks like Popoff (who loves the album -- his favorite by Golden Earring oddly enough) hears the Stones on Grab It For A Second too, not to mention '70s Aerosmith, which didn't occur to me. And the track that I call "rock-disco," he calls "venomous, deliciously dark and decadent funk metal, Germanic and barbed, trampled under foot." So, yeah: rock-disco.

And speaking of Zappa, I always forget that "King Kong" on Babe Ruth's First Base is his song. Guess I should listen to Uncle Meat someday. (I've never heard Jesse Winchester's original version of "Black Dog" either, I just realized.)

I'm not that big on Zappa, but Uncle Meat seemed pretty entertaining in the 70s. I don't feel the need to exhume it though. Googled Steve Stuka and found a well-regarded Boston College alum (who might also be Steve Stuka the backfield coach,) E-Bay seller of cool-looing model cars (good feedback ratings) and someone who says "If Radio Birdman plays I will go" (getting mild in his middle age?) That last is on a site trying to gin up a petition re getting RB added to a Stooges tour of Australia (in 2003). Also, alas, gets accused of some sketchy political tactics elsewhere, if this the same SS--could be, since RB's Deniz Tek and Angie Pepper's own opinionations weren't too savory (which is just what a combination, on paper anyway, of Gogol B, Rachid T., System Of A D., and sometimes Sepultura, look like to me--yum!)(ditto a pop metal Bangles)

great post!

i had to read it three times to get it all, but i enjoyed it a great deal.

Picturing xhuxk listening to Ruth Underwood recite Frank Zappa's very weird jokes on Uncle Meat made me laugh for a minute or two!

Ted Nugent released a digital single, "I Still Believe," to gin up enrollment on his mailing list. So I downloaded a copy.

Lyric fail.

Samples:

I pursue life
I pursue my happiness
I'm so damn alive
I'm so in love with this

Geezus.

At one point in the bridge he switches to referring to himself in the third person, presumably because he didn't have some female backing singers to take the part:

He believes
He still believes it
He believes in America

Coulda worked harder on the lyrics since it's a song purportedly about his undying belief in the American dream.

Anyhoo. Music and riff: B. Message hindered by too high school-ish (or Tea Party) clumsy way with words, C-.

Rolling Stone mag is worth a gander this week, on-line, anyway, for a big piece on Alex Jones. He's made a big career out of catering to really stupid white people, many young, by repackaging old conspiracy theories and John Bircher crap. The article's way too cordial and forgiving of arrant nonsense but it's an indicator of the times.

If you read the whole thing it creates the impression that books, some of them decent, had a formative role in this. Like William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, reading of which did not turn most people into lunatics.

Jones crops up here and on Rolling Country because the likes of Ted Nugent and Shooter Jennings believe strongly in him. Maybe you guys know of more. There are certain kinds of only semi-successful rockers who seem to gravitate to his stuff. People who care about protecting their careers, or who have careers to protect, I don't think so. I could be wrong.

When I've listened to segments because of its presence in extremism the show gives me a headache. It's way too full of illogic and complete rubbish to tackle. Like a tarbaby, it's best steered clear of.

Some quotes stood out:

Jones and his staff are currently scripting his 19th film, which will examine the New World Order strings attached to Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck — a sort of Tea Party Deception.

19 films. It's a challenge to name any beyond the one pointed to in the article, Loose Change. I guess the point is that if you can make 100 films that 1,000 or 2,000 see a piece/globally, you have a pretty big audience.

He's in Austin so maybe xhuxk knows the area here:

Here, in the self-proclaimed world capital of live music and conspiracy culture, Jones is part celebrity, part mascot. During lunch, a stream of teenage and twentysomething fans approach Jones to shake his hand and thank him.

This is at some Mexican restaurant in a locale called South Congress.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/talk-radios-alex-jones-the-most-paranoid-man-in-america-20110302?page=2

Here's Nugent on Jones as an embed at my blog. If you can listen to it for three minutes now you're made of sterner stuff than I. The farther away you get from it the more it sounds like two people who are totally out of their minds.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/07/17/happy-ted-hate-party-everyday/

If you have a disordered mind that's beyond fixing with talk therapy but you're still functional in daily life I can theoretically see why the material has appeal. I think.

I was listening to Stackridge's third album today because of another thread today. Man in the Bowler Hat, produced by George Martin. And parts of it, particularly Dangerous Bacon, really sound like the Beatles. But it's not really for talking up here. Some of the YouTube videos are funny, like one where they're on the Old Grey Whistle Test sitting in deck/pool chairs playing their instruments.

Usually I don't link to my column on this thread, but this week's quotes Chuck: http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/the-lazarus-pit-hades-resisting-success/

No one blinks when we start a war anymore. Not a peep.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/03/18/lets-bomb-moe-its-easier-than-fixing-our-own-house/

Dug up old MR&R "Western Front" cut, "Libyan Hit Squad," by Tongue Avulsion. From 1982. It was
languishing on YouTube, perhaps unfairly so.

From the wires:

Atlanta GA --(Ammoland.com)- The Armed American Radio Network hosted by Concealed Carry Magazine writer and co-author of the highly acclaimed book, Lessons from Armed America, Mark Walters is proud to bring Ted Nugent to Armed American Radio as special guest/co-host this Sunday, March 20th.

Says Mark, “This Sunday marks a special day for Armed American Radio as we celebrate our 100th broadcast!

To make that milestone a little sweeter, AAR will also debut in five new affiliate cities and two new states during our 100th episode. I’m proud and honored that Ted Nugent, an incredibly powerful voice for freedom and self-defense will join me as my special guest/co-host as Armed American Radio continues its relentless march of freedom across America’s airwaves.

Will catch up with this thread after all this SXSW bullshit is behind me, but meanwhile here's a writeup of three actual hard rock bands I saw last night. Actually very interested in checking out albums by the first two.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/festivals/kid-rock-brings-bluesy-hard-rock-bands-to-sxsw-making-one-of-the-fests-highlights-20110319

From Stillwater, eh? I'm sure there's still gotta be an audience for that stuff on Friday and Saturday nights for Oklahoma Staters.

So there are three bands brought to town by Kid Rock?

Lot of stuff on YouTube re Taddy Porter, Leroy Powell and Ty Stone. Taddy Porter's is all hard rock, pretty much as xhuxk described. Seems to have been around the country, made videos, most memorable performance is "She's So Heavy." Other stuff sounds AC/DC influenced.

Ty Stone's songs are almost live acoustic versions, him alone. "American Style" does indeed do the John Mellencamp thang.

Leroy Powell, lots of sub-Shooter Jennings country stuff, I'm presuming from some album he made. A couple power trio tunes performed live on Nashville, TV. Southern rock boogie, not that fast, well-played. In the same style as Jukin' Bone in that it's decent but you can't remember the tunes after you're out of the room and they're not playing.

I'd get Ty Stone's album before the others.

I really didn't hear any country at all in Leroy Powell's music on stage (or AC/DC in Taddy Porter's for that matter), but yeah, when I googled Powell the next day, I found that he'd apparently made an album or two of what somebody called Gram Parsons-leaning country a few years ago -- usually that means alt-country, and doesn't sound inticing to me at all. But if he records in his current power trio format, I'd still like to hear it; most of the songs came off real good live, I thought.

My wife actually said that Taddy Porter worked an okay Billy Joel-style piano ballad into their set, but I somehow missed it -- I might've been talking to somebody at the bar. I really didn't find their songs catchy or memorable at all -- easily my least favorite of the three sets -- but maybe what I heard wssn't typical of them.

One thing I didn't mention in my piece about Ty Stone is that the guy is obese -- maybe not morbidly (not sure where you draw the line), but close. And he guested on a song called "Mud Flap" on hick-hopping fellow fatty Colt Ford's album last year, which might make it the most heavyweight musical duet I've ever heard of. (The Fat Boys only had one guy that big, I think. Not sure about the Weather Girls.) Also, both Ty Stone and Leroy Powell have apparently toured with Kid Rock -- who yeah, at least supposedly hand-picked all three bands for the SXSW event. Originally Leroy Powell wasn't on the bill though -- Blackberry Smoke, a Southern Boogie band from Georgia whose Little Piece Of Dixie CD I liked a couple years ago, were instead. But they're tied up on a tour with Zac Brown now, from what Ty Stone told me.

And again, will try to catch up on the rest of this thread before long.

Couple other hard rock sxsw sets I saw and kind of liked (Easy Action, Weedeater, Bubble Puppy) are mentioned (among other small shows) in this roundup here. Easy Action and Weedeater have the usual pigfuck/stoner-rock vocal problems, though Laughing Hyenas nostalgia (see Stairway) lets me cut the Easy Action guy slack.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/festivals/the-bands-you-didnt-see-but-maybe-should-have-at-sxsw-20110320

Doubt Mutiny On The Bounty or Les Butcherettes (or Weedeater for that matter) are at all worth investigating further, fwiw, but I at least found the parts of their sets that I stuck around for diverting. (It was actually difficult to come up with shows I saw that didn't outright bore me, or at least seemed sucky in an interesting way. But there was a lot I couldn't fit into my schedule, too -- St. Vitus, Pentagram, Christian Mistress, Endtables, Dennis Coffey, the Rods -- so maybe those were better.)

jealous that you got to see bubble puppy. even a 2011 bubble puppy. really enjoying your gig write-ups by the way!

One thing I didn't mention in my piece about Ty Stone is that the guy is obese -- maybe not morbidly (not sure where you draw the line), but close. And he guested on a song called "Mud Flap" on hick-hopping fellow fatty Colt Ford's album last year, which might make it the most heavyweight musical duet I've ever heard of.

In the Eighties, UK had Mammoth. Intentional truth in monikering. I seem to recall merciless sport being made of them.

And then, here, there was Poison Idea.

I recall being completely turned off -- kind of nauseated, actually -- by Colt Ford's momentarily successful video.

ZZ Top marketing into the artisan economy -- stuff for rich people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue-2UZVEpuE

The Can-Am Roadster. I gotta say, set to La Grange, it just looks ludicrous -- touring bikes for people who like to take a lot of stuff with them and are afraid to wipeout.

Out of curiosity went back and looked at Colt Ford stuff on YouTube. T'see if I was being harsh and the "Chicken and Biscuits" video comes on and everytime I replay it I hear the girl saying "You're impossibly fat" when she's actually saying "You're impossibly fast".

I sort of likes No Trash In My Trailer but mostly because he doesn't sing it, a famous guy did.

I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that as a novelty he's over. Morbidly obese white country and hip-hop, people who can sing brought in to do choruses. You could pass it off as new southern rock I guess.

I saw Pontiak at SXSW. They're three brothers from Virginia and their studio albums are slightly more restrained than this live footage I shot - this song, "Shell Skull," is only four minutes long on their 2008 album, but here it nears the 11-minute mark. It's really good, but doesn't peak until about the seven-minute mark, right after the drum solo. How's that for a recommendation that only counts as one in the context of this thread?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wANnN78FeDE

Ha! The assist drummer signals the climax. Cool! They only had time to do one number? Anyway, I gather that Emo's, thougb famous, is small.

I still need to check out that clip. But yeah - re: Colt Ford -- his album really didn't go anywhere commercially. I'd be surprised if his country chart career hasn't already peaked, at this point. (Also, I realized that he has actually done a duet with somebody probably even bigger than Ty Stone -- namely the Southern rapper Bone Crusher, who has been said to weigh in around 380 pounds.)

Via email, obviously of concern to readers of this thread:

New York, NY (March 16, 2011)—Eagle Rock Entertainment, through earMusic, is proud to announce the release of Big Dogz, the new studio album from legendary Scottish rockers Nazareth. The CD hits stores May 10, 2011 [MSRP $13.98].
Produced by guitar player Jimmy Murrison and sound wizard Yann Rouiller, the album’s production avoids the trappings of traditional polish in an effort to capture the challenging edge of classic rock’n’roll. Obviously, this is one band that has stuck to its guns not giving an inch for trends and fashion. Like Motorhead, AC/DC or The Ramones, their personal vision supercedes any inclination whatsoever to follow the pack. The result of this hard-headed singularity? Sixty million albums sold in a glorious 41-year career.
Nazareth has invested their time in finding the original sound and spirit of the ’70s, when rock bands expressed values and ideas only through their instruments, an amp and a mic. To this end, they’ve completed an album with nearly no overdubs or multiple takes, no vocal lines or solos adjusted through a computer. The new Nazareth album is what the band really is: four men who live rock music, recording together in the same room at the same time, showing what they really are, and what they really want. One of the purest diamonds of Rock music, Big Dogz, will surely join their previous albums No Mean City and Hair Of The Dog in the most representative episodes of a glorious history.
Founder member Pete Agnew says “They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but having recorded the new Nazareth album Big Dogz, I don’t agree. We’ve got some tasty bones here! Our friends at earMusic offered us the opportunity to mark some new territory and the ‘Nazhounds’ are delighted to be back among their pack. We’re straining at the leash to tour this puppy. We reckon it’s bitchin’! So get ready, because in 2011 the Big Dogz gonna howl!!”

Nazareth is:
Dan McCafferty (vocals)
Pete Agnew (bass)
Lee Agnew (drums)
Jimmy Murrison (guitars)

Jones crops up here and on Rolling Country because the likes of Ted Nugent and Shooter Jennings believe strongly in him. Maybe you guys know of more.

Dave Mustaine has definitely been on his show. (I've heard that with my own ears.) And I believe I've heard that Willie Nelson and the rapper KRS-One have dropped by, as well.

He's in Austin so maybe xhuxk knows the area here...at some Mexican restaurant in a locale called South Congress.

Yeah, that's a pretty hopping shopping/restaurant/etc. district, below the River. Since it's too far to walk unless you're really ambitious, it's not generally populated by students -- Lots of yuppies actually. Or, this being "weird" Austin, I guess what David Brooks would call Bobos. Bourgeois bohemia. Most notable club down there is the Continental, which regularly books rootsier acts, like say Mother Truckers.

They only had time to do one number?

No, they played for about 45 minutes; that was the last number of the night.

Found a good clean copy of Three-Man Army's A Third Of A Lifetime (Kama-Sutra, 1971), for $2 yesterday -- holy shit, I'd forgotten how great that record is. #244 in Stairway To Hell -- should've been higher, and why the hell did I get rid of it after I wrote the book? Played Nazareth's Loud'N'Proud for the first time in a while last night, too -- How the heck did that one wind up way down at #208??

So, speaking of Three-Man Army, how good are the Baker-Gurvitz Army albums? Passed up at least one of those yesterday; Popoff seems to say they're good, just less good. Also passed on an Elephant's Memory LP -- self-titled one, I think, which Popoff says has one great metal cut.

Ben Ratliff in the Times yesterday wrote about a mixtape of other bands that Scott Weinrich apparently made for himself several years ago that's now listenable to on line -- wonder if this is the first time Captain Beyond or Dust ever got mentioned in that paper (unless the latter came up in a Ramones feature once.) I don't think I've ever heard (or heard of ) Daemon or Necromandus -- both Brit bands, apparently, not in Popoff's or Jasper/Oliver's '70s metal books. Only Quartz song I ever heard is "Stocking Up the Fires Of Hell," on a 1984 compilation LP called Metal Killers; get the idea that they were more NWOBHM, so much later than Dust. Anyway, here's what Ratliff wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/arts/music/new-music-from-scott-weinrich-mary-mary-and-bobby-sanabria.html

He links to the blog that has the actual tape posted; I went there, poked around just a little bit, but I'm not finding it yet. Kind of curious when the music on the "present" side of the tape is from; Ratliff doesn't say what year Weinrich made it.

Gave a listen to Leroy Powell & the Messengers' early 2010 Atlantis album a few days ago on Rhapsody -- too long at 14 songs, could've definitely used some pruning of some of the more forgettable/generic sub-Shooter (as George described) Southern rock cuts, but I liked the six-minute boogie-metal dirge "Gravedigger Blues," the hopped-up Canned Heat kinda boogie "Lookout World (I'm Coming)," and the sort of new wavish rockabilly cut "The House Is Rockin'." Also has some gospelly background vocals here and there. I'd pay a buck or two for the CD.

So okay, here's a link to that Weinrich mix tape (which actually opens with Three Man Army -- wow, what a weird coincidence!)

http://terminalescape.blogspot.com/2011/02/seeds-of-inspiration.html

Also has a Bang track, apparently. And Mammoth Volume show up on Side Two. (I haven't listened to it, though.)

Did you ever get a chance to check out my article, Chuck?

Wait, the Hades one? Or something else? (Sorry, I've mostly been lost in SXSW and book-proofing land the past few weeks.) Anyway, if you mean Hades, yeah, I saw it, and I am very cool with Stairway being an "essential false-metal compendium." But I think you left out my best Hades line, about how "if they wanted to 'resist success,' they were sure going about it the right way"! I do want to hear that album again now, too.

Im not sure what Bang track is on the Weinrich comp, but that first album (S/T) is terrific.

Someone pestered me to listen to Sick Puppies. I let them wear me down. Marginal Aussie-emo band, sound like half a dozen other bands that could get a song played on Disney or something. Say they're influenced by Silverchair but I'd believe more if they were honest and said Busted or the Jonas Brothers. Are they supposed to be popular?

Usually sounding like you're trying to be really earnest over metal guitar -- or music for youn boys out in a "no one understands me" teen movie has me hitting the reject button in about thirty seconds. They were all of that.

In other matters was re-listening to the Soft Boys' first album, Can of Bees and first single on Radar, "Anglepoise Lamp." Harder than what made Robyn Hitchcock famous, Kimberly Rew on guitar -- later to Katrina & the Waves -- gives it a mid-Seventies bite that owed as much to quirky English rock as New Wave or punk. Actually, it's pretty grubby. "Do the Chisel," for example, sounds exactly like you'd think. "Skool Dinner Blues," "Leppo & the Jooves," a stock but good version of "Cold Turkey." Plenty of mostly standard blues rock guitar having a lot to do with Wilko Johnson's tone for the Feelgood's. The louder you play it the better it sounds, maybe the hardest record Hitchcock was ever involved with.

Interesting -- I never would have guessed that the Soft Boys were ever much of a rock band; I should check that out again sometime. (Think I may have owned it, briefly, decades ago.) Coincidentally, I was just marveling again at Wilko's playing on Dr. Feelgood's 1977 Sneakin' Suspicion yesterday -- especially in "Paradise" and "Time and the Devil," the latter of which seemed to almost show a Hawaiian slack-key influence, unless I was just imagining it. Most of the album rocks its r&b with a brutality equal to the Count Bishops, but Wilko could sure sound weird when he wanted. Totally can hear how he inspired the Gang Of Four's Andy Gill, too. I need to get more Feelgood stuff.

As for Sick Puppies, I would've told you not to bother. They didn't fare too well in Singles Jukebox this week, either, fwiw (though I didn't even bother voting; just seemed pointless to me):

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=3280

This from the Ratliff post made me smile. It's something only someone who works at the New York Times could come up with. It's typically wrong although he means well.

Sophisticated CD reissuers have not much serviced this confused era in metal, and it feels right to get it in this form, a scurfy-sounding sampler from someone whose life was changed by it.

Actually, they did. All of that stuff has been reissued. However, the usual critics couldn't actually have been bothered to notice. Of if they did it was take it right to Amoeba for trade credit.

All of Quartz's records were reissued almost a decade ago. I had one of them. Was produced by Tony Iommi, I think. They were decent but not Witchfinder General or even quite amusingly idiosyncratic and failing as Witchfynde. Similar ideas, though. Heh.

As for Sick Puppies, I would've told you not to bother.

Had no idea they were Xtian. Didn't get far enough into any of the tunes to grok it. Turned "Maybe" off after not quite a minute. Makes sense. The person pestering me about them is heavily into Norman Vincent Peale-ism and listening to stuff alleged to have some 'uplifting' quality.

"These guys are one of the best contemporary groups I have heard, very much in the vain of protest, sweet, raw, piercing," was the reason I was supposed to listen.

They just reminded me of Busted, Simple Plan and Yellowcard, the latter of which I've noticed has a new album out. I would've thought they grew up, aged out of their audience and failed back around 2007.

BTW, if you're going to go exploring Dr. Feelgood, go for Malpractice, their second and the only one released in the US. Johnson's right at the top of his game on it. Remember it getting a classic absurd review by either Christgau, or in the "red book."

Yeah, everybody swears by Down By The Jetty, but Malpractice is the one, for sure. I found the live album, Stupidity, kinda disappointing. Also, watch out anytime Wilko sings.

Me too. It was an album that debuted at #1 in the Brit charts and was at the height of the band's popularity. But I was surprised that it was just average. Never saw the documentary on the band. Have yet to see it rentable on cable.

hey, chuck, i know you dig the power pop that has actual power, do you have the code blue album? 1980 on warner brothers. i only have a four song promo twelve inch. really dig this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9584i3EGs

xp Yeah, I've got Malpractice too, on CD. It rules. But my (vinyl) Sneakin' Suspicion is definitely a U.S. pressing.RS Red guide lists them both, gives both two stars, and right, the review is ridiculous: "Simple to an extreme, these Britons emulate but fail to match the early R&B-influenced exploits of groups like the Rolling Stones. Their LPs sound like sparse backing for a lead musician who never appears." (Pretty sure the guy who wrote that, Charley Waters, was a big prog fan; also "manages a record store on Nantucket Island.")

Christgau's Malpractice review (c/p'd here from his website) was only slightly more favorable:

Malpractice [Columbia, 1976]
As with so much pub-rock, this never quite gets out of the pub. The funk quotient of bands like this one is invaluable, and their U.S. bid does offer several memorable originals ("Another Man" and "Don't Let Your Daddy Know") and worthy remakes ("I Can Tell" and "Riot in Cell Block #9"). But then there's all the OK stuff--side two is a B side indeed, if not C plus. And I can't help wondering whether a debut album that sounds like a stylized *J. Geils Band* doesn't portend death by secondhand mechanization. B

His '70s book says he originally gave it a B+, though.

By the way, started listening to my advance of the new Nazareth album in the car; about halfway though, I'd say it almost definitely already ranks among my favorite albums of the year so far. First two cuts kind of made me shrug, but starting with the third one -- a heavy religion-skeptic dirge called "Jesus" -- the thing really seems to kick in. McAfferty's wail holds up well -- seems to use more myth-metal operatic vibrato than in his younger days actually -- though you can tell he's old (64), and he spends lyrics of a couple songs reminding you he is.

And Scott, no, I don't have Code Blue, though maybe I used to? Vaguely remember comparisons to the Police, though I'm probably way off on that. (Ha ha, New Trouser Press Record Guide: "L.A.-based Code Blue may be best remembered for the fact that its only album was released in a blue plastic bag; the group, which actually had talent, fell victim to the post-Knack backlash against Angelino power pop." Goes on to say that they were "the brainchild of original Motels guitarist Dean Chamberlain," and their LP was good but with no great cuts.)

well, listen to that one song. i think you might like it. it's definitely the one that stuck out on the 4-song thing i have.

Making a compilation for a friend that turned 50. He is a jazz head who likes a lot of music and I am making him a metal mix with one song from every year since he was born. I found this, by a band called Bitter Creek, a song which is said to have been recorded in 1967:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYqvyxK3Qpo&feature=player_embedded

I could find nothing about this band!! Anyone know anything?

Also, since the guy is 50, many of his years are firmly pre-metal. What do you think of these choices:

1961 Howlin' Wolf-I Ain't Superstitious
1962 John Lee Hooker-Boom Boom
1963 The Trashmen-Surfin' Bird
1964 The Kinks-You Really Got Me
1965 The Sonics-The Witch
1966 The Monks-Complication
1967 Bitter Creek-Plastic Thunder
1968 Blue Cheer-Parchman Farm
1969 High Tide-Futilist's Lament
1970 Sir Lord Baltimore-Kingdom Come
1971 Dust-Love Me Hard
1972 Babe Ruth-The Mexican
1973 Budgie-Breadfan
1974 Stepson-Rule In The Book
1975 Rainbow-Man on the Silver Mountain
1976 Judas Priest-Victim of Changes
1977 Legs Diamond-Stage Fright
1978 Chrome-Chromosome Damage
1979 Triumph-Lay It On The Line

I am not happy with 1979 but the guy is fairly well-rounded with his musican education so I am trying to avoid the obvious choices. Priest is kinda iffy as far as that goes but I am thinking he might not know their earlier stuff. Still, he probably knows Rainbow in 1975. (He knows The Kinks but that's kind of an important song and 1964 has a dearth of appropriate tunage, understandably.)

I appreciate any other suggestions!

Never heard of Bitter Creek before, and doesn't look like they are in either the Jasper/Oliver or Popoff '70s metal books.

Someday maybe somebody will explain to me what's supposed to be so great about Rainbow. I've just never been able to get excited about them, no matter how hard I try. Picked up a two-LP Best Of Rainbow comp from 1981 on Polydor UK a couple years ago (16 tracks from 1975 to 1981), and I like it fine but it's always kind of slog to get through, and nothing ever kills me on it -- nope, not even "Man On Silver Mountain." No idea what my #1 cut is. Maybe "Since You Been Gone," and I like Head East's version of that one at least as much.

Played that Metal Killers compilation I mentioned above today, inspired by the mentions of Quartz here, and what hit me most is that the cuts by Tygers Of Pan Tang ("Rendezvous," 1982) and Diamond Head ("Out Of Phase," 1983) and maybe even Quartz ("Stoking Up The Fires Of Hell," 1980) do not even really sound all that metal -- I mean, they'd be metal enough for Stairway to Hell purposes obviously, but I'm kind of surprised that true-not-false-metal purists don't dismiss them as mere "rock" or "AOR" or whatever. In fact, seems to that lots of early '80s "true" metal (by Dio or Dokken, say) is less metal than metal fans admit. Also still convinced that, when Priest and Maiden took over in the late '70s/early '80s, they actually mostly tended to make metal less heavy than what had gone down in the early '70s -- metal lost is sludge-boogie groove, obviously, but also got slicker, thinner, more antiseptic, for the most part. Don't get Jasper/Oliver's claim that Priest "beat Sabbath into the ground" at all; they sound so stiff and prissy in comparison. (Not saying there weren't exceptions; I'm generalizing. But I even remember '80s doom bands like say Trouble and Saint Vitus and Candlemass sounding really thin to me compared to old Sabbath/Bang/Dust stuff, and saying so in Creem Metal at the time. Anyway, on Metal Killers, one big exception might be Accept's "Fast As A Shark," which really roats -- and I'd never noticed before that it starts with that German oompah schlager snippet, pretty funny. And I do like the Pan Tang/Diamond Head/Quartz/Priest cuts -- the Priest one being "Rocka Rolla," though Halford's deep intonations there already strike me as kind of ridiculous.)

Wow, didn't expect to go off on such a tangent. I still need to listen to that Code Blue song Scott linked to!

That Accept cut really "roars," I mean.

(And fwiw, it's been a million years since I actually played a Dio or Dokken album, especially any from the early '80s, so I could be off-base on those, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some heavy cuts; I'm probably going more on my impressions on catching cuts here and there over time. Really have no desire to revisit those records; they've just never struck me as all that interesting to begin with.)

And, at least when I was listening in the '80s, I actually thought Saint Vitus (who made it into my metal book) pulled the doom off better than Trouble or Candlemass (who didn't). But I still thought Vitus sounded kind of reined in; didn't have enough howl to their sound, somehow. (I'd definitely pick up any Trouble LPs now, if I saw them real cheap, though. Have a feeling I may have missed the boat on them.)

80's recording studios were weird.

and, yeah, molly hatchet were probably as heavy or heavier than some of those much lauded nwobhm bands.

i dig the one quartz album i have.

I'm not sure most modern metal fans would consider Dokken "true metal" -- they're kind of a joke these days, although I love them and think that they're pretty underrated band. Didn't you like that live thing from 1981 that came out a few years back? I don't know, I think you should give Breaking the Chains, under Lock and Key, or Tooth and Nail another shot. As far as Dio goes, it sounds like you just aren't a fan, but Last in Line is probably the closest thing he's done to your sensibilities (as far as I've been able to read them).

The bigger thing, however, is I think where a lot of the disconnect between your read on heavy metal and "true metal" fans lies -- your take on heavy metal is that it's heavy, other peoples' is that it's metal. Sabbath/Bang/Dust were, essentially, slowed down, amped up blues. Maiden/Priest era is when it became more about the metallic nature than the heaviness. That's where it became just "metal" and not "heavy metal." And you prefer the heavy to the metal, it seems.

The Dokken live disc is excellent. Well worth checking out.

Sabbath/Bang/Dust were, essentially, slowed down, amped up blues.

^give me this type of stuff, over anything else, basically.

And you are welcome to it!

Much appreciated

Changed 1975 from Rainbow to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikdzbjy8O6A&feature=artist

Re: Dokken

A friend of mine who books shows and did a little metal writing named Thomas was at the very last Concrete Foundations Festival in Los Angeles. He was heavily into the first wave of death metal bands and the early black metal stuff, an ear to the underground for sure.

At the hotel, Dokken did an acoustic show. Thomas was up front singing along! I was amazed and asked him how a guy who loved such ugly, niche stuff was digging Dokken and he said simply that when they first came out, it was okay for people who liked the thrash and other non-commercial stuff to like them, they had street cred of sorts and were not just a "glam" band.

He was right. The first few Dokken discs - "Breaking The Chains" (which first came out on the Carrere Records label which released a lot more underground stuff in France at the time) and "Tooth And Nail" - were enjoyed by the same people who were listening to Metal Blade and other post-NWOBHM stuff. Don himself helped out the Scorpions and to tie this in with the doom references, also produced this album:

http://www.doomsmoker.pl/home/images/stories/okladki/S/Saint_Vitus/saint%20vitus%20-%20cod%202.jpg

Oh, and re: Accept "Fast As A Shark," that sure was an important song in the subsequent development of thrash (all of the greasy German thrashers pointed to it) and even crossover! I was interviewing someone many years ago who had a connection to the old hardcore matinee days at CBGBs (I want to say it was TOmmy Victor of Prong) and he pointed out how "Fast As A Shark" was the only "metal" song on the CB's jukebox that ever got play when the matinee crowd was around. It got total respect at a time when the baldies and long hairs were really at odds with each other.

Oh, and I found something that shits all over thatTriumph track for 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvv7gu0UKd0

I heard Slough Feg's cover and didn't know it was a cover!

(Bill Magill can leave the hall... :) )

I actually thought Saint Vitus (who made it into my metal book) pulled the doom off better than Trouble or Candlemass

Toss up. The only Vitus album I keep coming back to is the debut with Reaghers on vocals. Don't know if you put that in Stairway. My recollect was you want with Born Too Late.

Trouble's debut was good. The next one, The Skull, almost as. The third was lame -- the
Christian stuff of the lead singer messing things up. Around this time I had them on a radio show at Lehigh. The lead singer basically couldn't talk. He was either out of his mind on dope, an idiot
savant or some combination of the two. So I had to rely on the guitarist who was propping him up. They opened for King Diamond at the Airport Music Hall in Allentown and were better than fair.

Rubin latched on to them for Def American and that album is good. And one I listen to the most is Plastic Green Head, which was well after their Sabbath phase, on Century Media here.

It has real songs and attempts at same on it and a strong modern heavy psychedelic flavor. Killer version of the Monkees' Brill building thing, "The Porpoise Song," which I'm assuming was from Head. Also
"Tomorrow Never Knows." Lennon's Revolver and post Revolver stuff has often been a magnet for hard
rock and metal bands.

Don't get Jasper/Oliver's claim that Priest "beat Sabbath into the ground" at all; they sound so stiff and prissy in comparison

Well, no. But Sabbath was starting to turn out really bad albums when Priest was making good singles.

"Hell Bent for Leather" is great. "Head Out on the Highway" is the great unintentional Cold War metaphor for the Strategic Air Command. Listen to it, not as a motorcycle or road song, but as being in an even bigger piece of heavy metal, a B-52.

"Living After Midnight" is a very good single. "Electric Eye" is another great Cold War metaphor.

And they did "Green Manalishi". So, while all this was being issued, Sabbath was doing ... Heaven and Hell. Good, second resurgence stuff, but not the same cloth of the first four or five albums.

It's a even to advantage Priest battle for the time the latter was printing their strongest radio material.

"Well, no. But Sabbath was starting to turn out really bad albums when Priest was making good singles."

What are these bad albums? I'll admit Technical Ecstasy was mediocre, then they had a run of four stellar albums until Gillan left. What are the "really bad ones"? Seventh Star????

Heaven and Hell kills that Priest period. Priest wasnt the better band till '84, and at that point Sabbath was pretty much toast.

I put to you that Never Say Die is better than anything Priest ever did. Everybody can go ahead with the Challops calls, which is as weak as being called a Rockist.

Sabbath/Bang/Dust were, essentially, slowed down, amped up blues.

^give me this type of stuff, over anything else, basically.

― Thraft of Cleveland (Bill Magill), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 3:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is p otm actually; I wouldn't say it's the BEST stuff in the world, but it's pretty closer; lot closer than J Priest

(xp) Gorge's Trouble synopsis otm except that they did two albums for Def American, not one. I happen to think both are brilliant, as the band really added to the Sabbath foundation with late-era Beatles and Hendrix psych tossed into the mix. Saw them live several times in that time and they always delivered too.

Really bad albums, maybe a little hasty. Never Say Die. I like it but it's technically not a very good record.

Never listen to Never Say Die ot Technical Ecstasy.

Consider Sad Wings Of Destiny to be one of the best albums ever by anyone.

Jeff nailed it. Cream/Hendrix made blues loud. Sabbath/Bang/Dust made it heavy. Priest/Maiden made it metal.

Some people don't dig that evolution and that's fine. I listen to it all though.

Yeah, it's all good stuff -- Heaven and Hell and Screaming for Vengeance are both great records. But like Brian said, some people don't dig that evolution. If "Electric eye" doesn't send a tingle up your spine every time you listen to it, though, more's the pity.

i refuse to compare black sabbath and judas priest. i listened to them both all through my childhood. two of my favorite bands. i still listen to them. i mean, black sabbath are probably my favorite rock band ever, but there is more than enough room for both.

"Never listen to Never Say Die ot Technical Ecstasy."

You should.

Why when there's so much better?

Some people don't dig that evolution and that's fine. I listen to it all though.

^your quote man, you apparently "listen to it all". Guess not.

xhuxk, you get a promo of Deep Dark Robot? The "Will You Be My Girl" video didn't send me running, a surprise because it was Linda Perry and I always hated "What's Up?" or whatever it was called. Which, it seems, she did, too.

Don't think I got that, George, though I will look around. Possible I circular-filed it without listening, if so. I'll check out that song, either way.

Curious what the more metal-headed around here think of the new album by Swede boogie-stoner dudes Graveyard, Hisingen Blues. I sort of like it, at least when it's sort of reminding me of Zeppelin. But when it starts reminding me more of Soundgarden, I sort of don't. Probably need to listen more, though I don't know how fruitful that will be. Probably liked the first album more. Might like the title track single's non-LP B-side, "Granny & Davis" (which I've only heard on Rhapsody,) as much as anything on the actual record.

Otherwise, I am very proud of myself for kicking off a Sabbath/Priest battle on this thread, then managing to keep my mouth shut.

I wasn't too into the Graveyard album. I love Soundgarden but yeah i know what you mean, they just aren't very good at being Soundgarden. Not heard the 1st album. Only checked it out as jeff recommended it.

Graveyard never reminds me of Led Zeppelin. Groundhogs, absolutely, but Zeppelin, never, and certainly not Soundgarden. My favorite thing about it is the drum sound. They really got that cardboard '70s drum sound perfect. If you like it, I recommend Horisont's Tva Sidor Av Horisonten, which is half in Swedish and half in English and sounds like Groundhogs mixed with Witchcraft and November ('70s Swedish band).

Zep/Soundgarden similarities are probably superficial (vocals in the background or whatever); Groundhogs hadn't occurred to me, but might make sense, I dunno. I like the Groundhogs' sound, but it's not like many of their songs tended to stick with me, so I guess they and Graveyard share that. Plus they are fairly close together on my CD shelf (separated only by The Great Society, Great White, Green Day, Pat Green, Grong Grong, and Groovski.) Anyway, here's what I wrote about Graveyard's debut, three years ago:

Graveyard, Graveyard (Tee Pee): More old-school doom-metal from Sweden, but this time of a notably more retro-psych bent, and proficient at muscular stomps that plop deep Danzig vocals over overcast post-Hendrix/Cream blooze sludge -- done best in the almost accurately titled "Blue Soul."

Though my copy's actually on the Swede psych label Transubstans, looks like. But Groundhogs could be "post-Hendrix/Cream blooze sludge" too, I guess.

Groundhogs were great

I heard a track off the new Groundhogs record the other day, it was v good...

I like the Groundhogs infinitely more than I like Cream.

A new Grounhogs LP? I thought McPhee was really ill?

He hasn't linked to it here, but anybody who hasn't checked out George's great General Electric tax evasion ad parody shuffle, should:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWPWx_PwawE&feature=player_embedded

Entirely unrelated, but definitely in line with this thread, George and/or Scott (or anybody else), have either of you guys ever heard the (temporary ex-Bay City) Rollers' 1979 Arista LP Elevator? Most obvious contemporaneous analogy, for the tuneage and expert Beatles harmonies and guitar crunch in "Elevator," "Playing In A Rock And Roll Band," "Turn On The Radio," and "Who'll Be My Keeper," would be Cheap Trick. Melodies are more idiosyncratic, twistier, less Sweet-glam than the louder shouting of the Rollers' earlier teenybop hits, so it took me a couple plays to get it, but I wound up really liking it a a lot; would definitely recommend it as well to anybody who's a fan of Enuff Z'Nuff (whose debut I saw for $1 at Waterloo a month or two ago and probably shouldn't have passed up.) Synths, somewhere between prog doodle and disco pulse, come out in "Stoned Houses #2" (which has some Pink Floyd "Have a Cigar" in its tune) and "Instant Relay." Hardest rocking track is probably the partially talk-boxed boogie "Back On The Road Again," which is explicitly about cocaine (seriously, they use that word about ten times in the lyrics); title track probably concerns drugs, too, given that the cover photo is of a big red pill (amphetamine maybe?) inside an elevator going up. "I Was Eleven" is a good song looking back on pre-teen school rebellion, and the closer "Washington's Birthday" is an odd sort of pomp-blues ballad. Credits claim the Rollers (all original members) played their own instruments; not sure if they'd really done that on their '75-to-'77 hits, or not.

Album didn't chart, either, at least in the U.S. Perhaps Arista didn't promote it. They'd had one called It's A Game get as high as #23 in 1977, but Strangers In The Wind in 1978 peaked at #129. So maybe this was contract fullfillment/fuck you to the label, something like that. Not to mention, obviously, their equivalent of something like the Monkees' Head, a decade or so before.

And okay, oops, "all original members" is wrong -- all but the singer, that is; Les McKeown is gone. Wiki: "At the end of 1978, the band had split with McKeown, fired (manager) Tam Paton shortly after and decided to continue in a more new-wave, rock-oriented sound. Their name was now The Rollers. South African-born Duncan Faure joined the band as new lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter. With Faure, the line-up produced three albums: Elevator (1979), Voxx (1980), and Ricochet (1981).[2] None of the releases sold well and they officially spilt up in late 1981."

i just got a couple latter-day rollers records, but can't remember titles right now. i'll play them soon.

listening to mark farner's solo s/t album from 1977. produced by dick wagner. despite the fact that i worship dick wagner and would start a church of dick wagner if i had the time, the production is pretty mushy. well, alternately mushy and big hollow echo type slick studio sound. even a promising title like "street fight" which is indeed about street fighting - like, 50's west side story street fighting - is a mush-fest. plus, sadly, dick wagner only plays on one track and even that is acoustic guitar. boooo!

Got a reissue of Rory Gallagher's Irish Tour in the mail, so that's what I'm listening to today.

that's a really good live album! if its the same as the old double album. i think that was the title.

Elevator is <strike>pirated</strike> distributed on the net pretty widely on the blogs for those things, particularly recommended at Robots for Ronnie. So if the links are still live I'll d/l a copy and give it a listen today. Definitely has my curiosity piqued.

i tell you what though mark farner was in good voice for his solo debut.

spot-played the 1978 follow-up by Farner now credited as *Mark Farner Band* a not so powerful power trio of mark, dennis bellinger (who would play in forgettable 80's line-up of grand funk), and andy newmark. jimmy iovine providing the flaccid lite-funky production.

don't even need to keep these albums. and i am decidedly a grand funk enthusiast.

oh and the 2nd solo thing is called *No Frills*. avoid. sadly.

enjoying this album much more. though a totally different beast than the horse mark farner is posing on for the cover of his 1977 album. zzebra was someone's idea of a supergroup featuring people from IF (i dig IF and for some reason i own, like, 8 IF albums which is probably way more than anyone would ever need), OSIBISA (dig them too cuz apparently i don't own enough santana albums), AYNSLEY DUNBAR'S RETALIATION (also dig), CURTISS MALDOON (whose two albums i REALLY like, but i'm probably alone there. or on ilx anyway), and some dudes from bands i've never heard like SEABIRD, ASHLEY SNOW, and RIFF-RAFF. and there you have it. just your average afro-percussion/jazz/prog/rock band in 1975. long jams. occasional flutes. some sweet riffs. these guys could play and they had some good ideas. but you would have to be a fan of jazzprog to dig it.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jUBSLyJJucU/SwVi3HakL8I/AAAAAAAAA4Q/IgusAtIv7jg/s1600/Zzebra+-+Take+It+Or+Leave+It+(front).jpg

i think i own both zzebra albums. will have to dig out the other one.

Pulled back out that 1980 Suzanne Fellini LP, which Scott mentioned and basically dismissed three months ago in the very first post on this thread; had never really thought of it before as a "rock" record, since the almost-hit single "Love On The Phone" (#87 pop) was a quirkily new wave hiccupped phone sex novelty closer to Lene Lovich or whoever. But turns out most of the rest of the album falls right in with the Benatar-rock of the time that we were discussing upthread: "Double Take," "Bad Influence" (Diddley beat), "Permanent Damage," "Bad Boy" (almost hard rock boogie underneath-- third cut on each side has "Bad" in the title, neat), "I'm A Rock" (roller rink girl lyrics and subliminal "I Wanna Be Your Dog" chord progression.) Plus a couple token ballads, of course, and an obligatory ignorable white reggae move ("Crazy.") But mostly, pop-rock, solider than most other simultaneous attempts by Fellini's fellow females.

really dig the one and only album by motor boys motor from 1982. hey, i like the motors AND the boys, so, why not? post-punky with liberal dashes of ubu and beefheart. their one single had beefheart cover on it. great at-the-verge-of-chaos guitars. a later incarnation would turn into the screaming blue messiahs who i never really listened to. trouser press panned it pretty much. but it deserves to be heard. even touch & go butthole and scratch acid fans would like it probably.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZQAGZEH6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

now playing: The Prowlers - Livin' Outside The Law (Unamerican Activities - 1987) u.k. rockabilly-ish punkpop. not great, but entertaining. three guys named andy in the band. not one mention - that i could find - on the internet about this band or album. not listed on discogs or rateyourmusic. which seems sorta impossible. the only way to see the cover on the internet is to find a copy on ebay of which there are two for sale right now. i would say buy it for a buck if you see it. but not any higher. okay, maybe 2 bucks.

and if you are curious about the cover:

http://cgi.ebay.com/PROWLERS-livin-outside-law-LP-uk-1987-12-track-b-/130504040004?pt=UK_Records&hash=item1e62a59e44

Sure do like the first Blue Ash album, No More, No Less (1973, Mercury). They're serious about their '60s elements and can lay them on thick, but it never comes off as formalist and they really end up seeming to be just righteously of their own time. There's this one song on side two called "Here We Go Again" where the hard rock and power pop are so effortlessly merged that it becomes hard to tell what's what.

xhuxk got Elevator right. Totally surprising glam rock record. Best stuff is when the stiff replacing Les does his Paul McCartney impression. It's dead on which makes the numbers hover somewhere between late Beatles and Wings. "Washington's Blues" gave me the late Beatles thing, too.

"Hello and Welcome Home" is the total McCartney pastiche. "I Was Eleven" sounds a lot like ELO and sure sounds autobiographical about their start as the Bay City part.

Followed listening to it with The Quick's Mondo Deco which made me laugh in its audacity. It took a lot of guts to think that had a chance anywhere but LA. Isn't one of the old members active here?

It rocks pretty great once you get past the startle of hearing "Chopsticks" stuck into the intro of the second album and the unusual version of "It Won't Be Long" opening the thing, ending with a classical fluorish. The UK had a similar act, Mr. Big, who sang in almost the same register as The Quick's
guy.

Especially like "Anybody" which breaks into a Brit invasion rave-up, the cover of "Rag Doll" and "My Purgatory Years," the latter which is the most glowering thing in the album, a decent accomplishment considering the pitch of the singer. Who much later went on to be sort of famous for a bit in The Rembrandts.

Here's a quote from the LA Weekly which sums up why this was dead on arrival in '76.

by the end of the 1970s, the last thing young, macho audiences (of either gender) wanted to see was five sissified guys licking ice-cream cones together (to this day, Benair can't stand Mondo Deco's cover photo). Even more hated were Wilde's ultra-fey vocals, which made Queen's Freddie Mercury seem as butch as Paul Rodgers in comparison.

"In the end, the Quick offended too many people," it reads. Probably why it still sounds good.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2010/03/the_quick_mondo_cd_falling.php

Poor man's Sparks comes to mind a bit, too.

St Holmes rejoins Nugent.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/Derek-St-Holmes-0404-2011/

okay dug around in a box and find a sealed copy of that rollers album. listening now...

Nugent's gonna be at the Iridium jazz club in NYC in May - every Monday night, they do a tribute to Les Paul with a different guest guitarist and some hard rock/metal folks have been taking part recently. Zakk Wylde was first. It's gonna be a drumless band - another guitarist, an upright bassist and a pianist backing him. I might stop in and see if he can keep his mouth shut for an hour and just play.

dug the rollers album. definitely a keeper. some Sweet, a little ELO, what's not to like?

played the "rock & roll musical" album from 1980 called *Rock Justice*. "Directed" by Marty Balin. the band involved is called Cinema. Was scared of it cuz of the involvement of marty circa 1980, but it's okay. the 2nd side especially is punky hard rockin' stuff. and luckily no Broadway vibe. just sounds like a loose concept album by any one of a thousand late-70's pop rock/hard rock bands. good guitar action. worth a buck. it says on the back that there is an EMI vhs tape of the album. would like to find that!

also played (some of) S/T album by Scott Wilk + The Walls on WB from 1980. blatant Elvis worship. Costello, that is. Like REALLY blatant. Like, I hope they sent EC some money. Yeesh.

playing an album by Livewire right now. *Changes Made* on A&M from 1981. really drippy so far. no tunes. no rock. just bleah.

more recommendable is the S/T album by Emperor on Private Stock from 1977. Richie Wise arrangements and production. some lite-rock fluffiness, but the guitars are front and center on the best cuts. "Dreamer" has a serious guitar attack towards the end and i wouldn't mind it if kept going a la "Free Bird" or something. really nice. definitely worth at least 2 bucks for that one track alone. but there is other goodness to be had.

and speaking of guitars, holy moly, got a Vice Squad EP from 1981 and it is sent from angels. so good. can't say i was listening to Vice Squad in the early 80's. lead track "Living On Dreams" is amazing punk. high energy. lead singer Beki has great punk pipes.

really digging this album by OZZ right now! 1980 on Epic. a two man attack. Gregg Parker is a raging guitarist. He was from Chicago. Frontman Alexis T. Angel was from Crookson, Minnesota. They met in Los Angeles. Parker played with Buddy Miles circa 1974. Before that he backed up the Chi-Lites on guitar. This album should have been bigger. Worth at least five bucks if you see it used somewhere.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_U1menI3veIs/SxKot_jHw4I/AAAAAAAABqI/8hGHy7xF_hk/s1600/ozz+-+no+prisoners+1980.jpg

Much amusing quote.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/04/05/nugent-signs-on-to-bachmanns-light-bulb-jihad/

Re Rock Justice, "Mr. Varney," one of the guitarists on it, is the founder of the Shrapnel Label Group.

Interesting AV Club interview with Sammy Hagar.

I actually read his book. Im not a fan of either his solo stuff or his VH stuff (fucking love Montrose, but discussing his time there only takes up about 15 pages), but he seems like an entertaining guy. He doesnt hold back, i'll tell you that.

Plus, Cabo Wabo tequila is actually really good.

Loooong Metal Mike Saunders email spiel (not to me, but I was cc:d) re: Precious Metal, who were discussed above. You may have to cut and paste the links into your browser, if you're interested in them, since I'm just gonna italicize the whole thing.(P.S. I've actually never met Leslie Knauer, and I'm not really sure whether I ever said what he says I said about her singing, or not! I did like her and her band, though.)

i've got decent semi-small-tonnage of live VHS footage that kills (re Precious Metal).

they were a REALLY good hard rock band, onstage with the guitar amps turned up.. simple pounding rhythm section like vintage 1972 SLADE. seriously.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/ep/precious_metal/precious_metal/
leslie has lots of this 4-song 12" 1986 ep (on a Jem/PVC subsidiary of all places, like the punk rock Dogs ATTACK (band name) issue on the same labe, same format) that you have probably never seen or heard

and swap her $5 or $7 for a copy (sealed),it's REALLY good. (the two hard rock cuts/songs that sound just like Slade's rhythm section, very nice bass/drums recording on that effort. i think one of them's called "Rock With Me, not on their 3 lps proper ,. oh and a different "STAND UP AND SHOUT" that's way different from the later 2nd lp. much better bass/drums audio).

she likes Suzi Quatro so if you have any lame Suzi box sets (digital or whtaever they call the things that go bad and go bleep bleep bleep all day ) you don't want, you can swap those too.

chuck eddy always thought LK(nauer) was the best female lead singer to come of of LA ever. hmmmm....i still like Ginger (Blake) with the insanely great pre-Honeys "Spare Time" 45 gary usher cut on her in 1961, but ok.

LK still (since the mid-90's) plays around California with her power-trio KANARY (bassist mary is mary from the punk rock Dogs). kinda stoner-rock with a great rhythm section (if you ever liked 10 seconds of ZZ Top this rhythm section is totally the shit, almost mesmerizing to watch for any musician who's into that style), def worth seeing.

and you know leslie had a Top 10 hit around europe (1978) at the age of 20-21 with the family-band Osmonds-family-kinda thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ6Y87STwQE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqM3P7LziIc (the promo video. or TV?)
(second lp is pretty good/very interesting, first lp with the hit single(s) is uhhh, uh as cheesy as the Osmonds/Partridges but no bubblegum content...hey, it was way too late like1977-78) (and the two brothers were older, no Shaun Cassidy potential)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwqG_-E5rxE (this ISN'T the orig bass player 1984-1989)
(1990 live) finding live Precious Metal youtube is fuckall hard. this is all that easily comes up with "precious metal lesllie" (or band member names) the orig rhythm section is what you want to hear (youtube), wherever the clips are hiding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwSj5YxRak footage of THIS is what you want (i have some on VHS, Detroit for starters).
it's a fuckin SLADE hit song from 1972! check the drum/yelled intro! awesome Noddy-Jim songwriting dead-on. (and sledgehammer Jim/Don rhythm section pounding). the dyke drummer could really pound it live, w/bass right there on the kick drum. even clueless Bruce Duff/LA vet back then was "wow, that band has got a good groove-drummer."

from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3yDWzdoto8
"Precious Metal's version of the jean knight hit "Mr Big Stuff". The Dutch group
the Dolly Dots did this song at concerts at the end of their career. It
was never recorded by them."
??? what? there's a Dolly Dots (dutch) connection? ??
(dolly dots cut the original issue of leslie's tune "THAT GIRL" and it was one of their early-mid 80's endless dutch Top 10 hits. crap 5-girl singing act, all issues/hits mediocre to lame).
the MTV video/precious metal for Mr Big Stuff was cool because it was so....retarded.
doesn't come up on Youtube,don't think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-2G7G4V2
this is patched to the footage of the MTV video/1985 "Bad Girls" (the first lp's poorly-chosen single. movie soundtrack thing/patched-together-cheap, since no real video budget from Mercury/Polygram for a "baby band" major label deal like they had)

once every 10 years leslie gives me and chuck a $2 bill (or a $3 beer) for doing her "cult band" promo. ha! there's a "rock critic" muso comment i posted years ago, on that last Youtube! (dull song Howl At The Moon that' s probably from 2nd lp which had a crap indie-label no-budget problem...maybe $25k? time for "good guitar sounds" unlike the first lp that me and chuck REALLY LIKE, but 10 cents for the drum sounds. less for the time to cut vocals).

another (DIY they shot it themselves, 1st lp) video that doesn't turn up on Youtube -- the pretty cool clip for CHEESECAKE / 1st lp, a song me and chuck REALLY like (him because of the gary glitter band "burundi" beats). first lp basically almost totally rules. it's like No.35 hard rock album of all time in chuck's "KIX ARE THE GREATEST BAND EVER, THIS WEEK ANYWAY" book aka Stairway To Hell 500 greatest "metal" albums.

I saw Precious Metal around 1990 at the Cat Club. Probably said so upstream. They were pretty much just like that live video cadged from YouTube. I wouldn't have called them great. Good to fair was more like it. Was by no means a bad show but neither was it spectacular.

Don't know what Kanary is like live. I did buy one of their CDs on a recommendation. Never play it.
If it was hard rock, I couldn't tell. It was nondescript. It's also not at all like PM. Amd it has nothing in common with ZZ Top. Maybe later CDs did.

My ongoing personal investigation of the cracked up rigged US economy from the POV here of comparing the history of electric guitar manufacturing to the present reality of arms manufacturing.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/04/07/guitars-versus-arms-which-jobs-are-worth-saving/

Mysteriously, found at the NY Times, a blurb for the opening date of Nugent's summer tour of national ribshacks, casinos and county seat ag fairs:

WACO

The Nuge Stays Huge

With his fitness studio, Nuge Java coffee, hunting safaris, “Spirit of the Wild” TV show and all-around ranting, raving and politicizing, it would be easy for Ted Nugent to lose sight of his guitar-shredding, vocal-throttling musical pursuits. But this is the Motor City Madman, and his engine is equipped to handle the extra load.

“How dare I deny my fellow man such glorious noise and rhythm,” Mr. Nugent, a resident of Waco, said of his 2011 tour. The title of the tour, “I Still Believe,” comes from his new single, about the eternal attainability of the American Dream. It’s available as a free download on Mr. Nugent’s Web site when you join the mailing list.

But why listen to it on your computer when you can experience it in the manic live setting that Mr. Nugent’s kick-off show, in his own town, will no doubt offer? There will be an overdose of soap-boxing and “ferocious animal roustabout musical outrage.”

“This year I’m going into thrilling detail of where, how and when my musical dreams and songs erupted,” Mr. Nugent said.

---->Hog Creek Icehouse, April 14, 7 p.m. tednugent.com

What a fucking joke. Here's the 'venue' in Spreegleville, Texas. Check the satellite photo.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=hog+creek+icehouse+waco,+tx&fb=1&gl=us&hq=hog+creek+icehouse&hnear=Waco,+TX&cid=0,0,13485151036813452041&ei=qpeeTfPPBsvXiALw27TyAg&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=2&ved=0CBwQnwIwAQ

Yeah, that Nugent item ran (with a photo -- a tour poster, apparently -- where he's standing beside a white buffalo) in the three or so Texas-coverage pages that run I think once a week in our Texas home-delivery edition. (Pages put together by an alleged nonprofit public media outlet called the Texas Tribune that I've never heard of otherwise. The guy who wrote the column that item is in, Michael Hoinski, wrote a couple things for me at the Voice once, and interviewed me once when I moved to Austin about the anthology I'm putting together. Apparently the column also runs in Texas Monthly -- it's confusing.)

Anyway, by coincidence I've been playing Nugent and the Amboy Dukes'Marriage On The Rocks/Rock Bottom from 1970 a couple times since I found a dollar copy a few weeks back. Assumed I would totally hate it, but took the chance. Still don't understand why they gave it two titles. Turns out I like it more than I expected to -- the aimless-hippie-wank-to-actual-rock-song ratio is off the charts, you don't even get many memorable riffs really, but a couple things in the middle of the first side ("Breast-Fed Gator," "Get Yer Guns") at least sort of show the seed of what Ted would start doing for real three or four years later, and I actually really like "Non-Conformist Wildebeest Man," which is sort of a fast (just 1:28) rockabillified speed hoedown that kind of reminds me of Zep's "Hot Dog" on In Through The Out Door. But the real audacious track, in terms of passingly entertaining bullshit, is the ten-minute closer "The Inexhaustible Quest For The Cosmic Cabbage," a kind of hodgepodge collage mastermix which in just its first couple minutes goes from out-and-out free jazz to Hendrix rip to a blatant (and actually good) early Beach Boys homage/parody to a country gospel quartet part, then back to free jazz, and then eventually ends with an "excerpt from Bartok," ha.

Agree with George about the one Kanary album I heard, when I was at the Voice -- wanted to like it, because I liked Precious Metal, but I didn't hear any hard rock on it at all, and nothing that stuck with me.

Saw Rush last night at MSG. Review and photos, both by me.

Still lolling at Hog Creek Icehouse. Just down the road apiece from the Bar None Ag Supply in the middle of nowhere...

Kinda want a T-Shirt from there, though.

One gets the impression that perhaps Nugent's 'Spirit Wild" ranch is somewhere off the Spreegle Rd.

Who had/has the bigger following in Waco? You decide.

I gave the idea of Ted playing the Hog Creek Ice House some thought and it occurred to me that for the newish famous hometown boy, one who had a column in the local newspaper for awhile, Ted doesn't have a very big following there. I mean, if the best you can do is fill a local saloon, as opposed to the football stadium in a Texas town, you're kinda on the feeble side of the power equation, right?

Here's the capacity of the place, from its website:

8,000 square feet plus an "Upstairs VIP Area" -- "available to rent for special events, group parties, dinners, business meetings, etc with seating for up to 150 people, full bar, high-definition televisions, upstairs restrooms, balcony, and more!" Total capacity ~600.

Who else from Waco was locally famous in a controversial way?

David Koresh came to mind.

Koresh had the Mount Carmel/Branch Davidian ranch/compound. It was assuredly much larger than the Hog Creek Ice House. Before the US government burned it.

But I couldn't find any estimates on how many people actually lived there at the height of its "popularity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco,_Texas

Here's a wiki list of "famous" people from Waco. It's pretty slim pickings. Jessica Simpson is the most popular musical artist. I think we can say she's more popular than Ted Nugent.

31 million vs. 5 million hits on Google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Jessica+Simpson&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=f&oq=

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Ted+Nugent&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=f&oq=

Discuss.

Apr 14 Hog Creek Icehouse
Hog Creek Icehouse
Waco Texas More Info
More Info

Apr 15 Nutty Jerry's
Nutty Jerry's
Winnie, TX Buy Tickets
Buy Tickets

Apr 16 Lone Star Park
Lone Star Park
Grand Prairie, TX More Info
More Info

Jun 25 Flaming Gorge Days (Stratton Myer's Park)
Flaming Gorge Days (Stratton Myer's Park)
Green River, WY More Info
More Info

Jun 26 The Depot
The Depot
Salt Lake City, UT DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jun 28 Celebrity Theatre
Celebrity Theatre
Phoenix, AZ DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jun 29 House of Blues
House of Blues
San Diego, CA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jun 30 The Grove
The Grove
Anaheim, CA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 01 Canyon Club
Canyon Club
Agoura Hills, CA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 02 Sunset Station Casino
Sunset Station Casino
Henderson, NV DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 06 Britt Pavilion
Britt Pavilion
Jacksonville, OR DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 07 Knitting Factory
Knitting Factory
Spokane, WA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 08 Emerald Queen Casino
Emerald Queen Casino
Tacoma, WA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 11 Belly Up
Belly Up
Aspen, CO DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 12 Ogden Theatre
Ogden Theatre
Denver, CO DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 13 The Midland by AMC
The Midland by AMC
Kansas City, MO DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 17 New Daisy Theatre
New Daisy Theatre
Memphis, TN DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Jul 21 Waukesha County Fair
Waukesha County Fair
Waukesha, WI On Sale April 1
On Sale April 1

Jul 25 Count Basie Theatre
Count Basie Theatre
Red Bank, NJ Public sale starts April 15
Public sale starts April 15

Jul 28 Outagamie County Fair
Outagamie County Fair
Seymour, WI More Info
More Info

Jul 29 Mountainfest 2011 (Mylan Mark)
Mountainfest 2011 (Mylan Mark)
Morgantown, WV Buy Passes
Buy Passes

Jul 30 Ridgefest (Freedom Park)
Ridgefest (Freedom Park)
Chicago Ridge, IL DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Aug 09 Full Throttle Saloon
Full Throttle Saloon
Sturgis, SD DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Aug 14 Penn's Peak
Penn's Peak
Jim Thorpe, PA DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Aug 26 Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Biloxi, MS DANGERZONE VIP
DANGERZONE VIP

Sep 02 The Central Wisconsin State Fair (Grandstand)
The Central Wisconsin State Fair (Grandstand)
Marshfield, WI On Sale April 4
On Sale April 4

nutty jerry's snow obviously the show to see.

"show"

GOOOOOOOOD evening Nutty Jerry's!!!!! How y'all doin'?? WHOOOO!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie,_Texas

Winnie is the host of the Texas Rice Festival (TRF),[6] which occurs during the first weekend of October annually. During the TRF, the farmers of Southeast Texas are appreciated, and there are live bands, singers, and a Beauty Pageant that takes place during this time. It starts on the Wednesday before the first weekend of October by a cook-off festival.

The first weekend after the first Monday of every month, there is a flea market entitled Larry's Old Time Trade Days. This is a cultural attraction for much of Southeast Texas.

kansas coming up at nutty jerry's

http://www.nuttyjerrys.com/

bull rides, extreme fighting, eddie money, AND johnny rivers. nutty jerry's has it all.

johnny rivers playing with delbert mcclinton. hell, i'd go see that.

38 special, buckcherry, little river band, air supply, christopher cross. man, their booker is a busy guy.

anyway, nutty gerry's is pretty friggin' big. it's a complex. george jones plays there. he ain't cheap.

Haha, another T-shirt I want:

http://static.eventful.com/images/block250/I0-001/003/438/894-8.jpeg

Monster trucks, crooners and bullriders.

Nutty Jerry's

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1411/5119268026_9fb1fe31c8.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/paxtonmobile/5119268026/&usg=__v8ES_kYU8e6jRRt3bGzjHhm5cQA=&h=334&w=500&sz=150&hl=en&start=2&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=y1XujwysnWm1HM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnutty%2Bjerry%2527s%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbm%3Disch&ei=QbekTYvKLoqosQO5w529CA

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrchriscornwell/5385966614/

Penn's Peak, Jim Thorpe, formerly known as the Flagstaff Ballroom, which I played. Second link
is Google cache so you can see my link describing it. Page down to the color code blocks for
Flagstaff -- heh.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3333/3659235879_0fc53dceee.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/candlebox/3659235879/&usg=__qL5AvGFtr8D_okAJYrWmY-gtd20=&h=373&w=500&sz=176&hl=en&start=13&zoom=0&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=fjzBm94CXp0-OM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpenn%2527s%2Bpeak%2Bjim%2Bthorpe%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbm%3Disch&ei=cbikTb7OFZHQsAPI5vj5DA

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DUGqnEF2ly0J:www.dickdestiny.com/+dick+destiny+flagstaff&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

Outagamie County Fair grandstand, rear view.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/OutagamieCountyFairgrounds.jpg/220px-OutagamieCountyFairgrounds.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour,_Wisconsin&usg=__xuGM9OhDYdvQmCPyoy6isCPy7Jk=&h=165&w=220&sz=8&hl=en&start=3&zoom=0&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=b9rp-TZtbyHebM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Doutagamie%2Bcounty%2Bfair%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbm%3Disch&ei=K7mkTebKGo-ksQPgr8j5DA

just in case anyone was wondering what the dangerzone vip package gets you:

One ticket*
Pre-show meet and greet with Ted
Photo with Ted (must bring your own camera)
One VIP laminate per person
One 8x10 photo of Ted (perfect for autographing!)
One promo code for 25% OFF anything in the Clothing section of the TedNugent.com Store**

Our Price: $410.00 USD

Includes the following charges:
Base Price: $375.00 USD
TedNugent.com Service Charge: $35.00 USD

Booking Now!

When & Where: May 21-28 in Malartic, Quebec, Canada

Price: $5000 + $140 license fee

Join Ted at his Canadian Gonzo Bear camp for the greatest black bear hunt available! Ted will be there with you, breaking bread, busting out the acoustic guitar and bringing down some monster bears.

Set on a 125,000 acres of prime black bear country, including 19,000 acres of beautiful fresh water fishing, this hunt welcomes rifle, black powder and all forms of archery. With multiple fresh stands for each hunter and access to trained German Shepherds, the kill and retrieval rate is near 100% for this hunt and it’s not uncommon to take multiple 350+ lb bears per week, and some 500+ lb bears.

Package includes:

* Stay at a first-class lodge
* Home-cooked meals
* Guide and trophy fees
* Local transportation
* Camp equipment
* Field prep
* Cleaning, skinning and quartering of meat
* And more!

Did the Pork Slam last weekend at Sunrize Acres. My wife and I drove a total of over 1400 miles to do this hunt, and it was worth every minute, every dollar, every hotel, every Dennys meal...one of the best weekends in my life, for sure! Came home with a huge cooler full of delicious Russian boar, which is being processed locally at a butcher shop here in East Tennessee. Spending time with the WackMaster was unreal...listening to him talk, watching how he signed autographs for every one of the hunters, and then hearing him sing and play "I just want to go hunting" and "Fred Bear" for the small group of hunting fans...it just doesn't get any better than that! Paul does an awesome job of organizing and making sure that you're having fun! Toby (Ted's son) was one of the guides, and he's a great guy, just like his Dad. Ted - keep on rocking, and raising hell with the liberals! Love ya, man. Maybe I'll get to do it again someday...

Submitted by rhud12345 on November 02, 2010

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=delicious+russian+boar&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

One is left with the impression that hunting one of these is only slightly more challenging than target practice on a 500-lb bag of rice with fur glued on, the hardest part being hauling it back to the shed.

Spending time with the WackMaster was unreal...

The Wackmaster Sunrise: A coffee with lots of body and hearty flavor... a “bold” morning coffee...Ted has taught us about being BOLD, has he not?

The Fred Bear Blend: Light, smooth, and very little aftertaste. A great after dinner coffee...literally, a gift from the “Spirit of the Wind”!

Ted’s Hunt Blend: A medium bodied “all day” coffee...in the blind, the boat or taking a break in the woods. This is about “up-grade”...enjoying the hunt AND the “nectar of the Gods”.

The Misty Dusk: Bold, rich in aroma...this dark roast coffee provides a hearty flavor in the cup. This is “intense” and Ted knows the meaning of INTENSE!

You're better than me. I can't spend that much time reading about his OTT crappy-ass efforts at merchandising the name.

It was a couple minutes well spent -- I'm literally in tears of laughter over Wackmaster Sunrise Coffee.

Ha-ha, Francs recommended over Ted at Nutty Jerry's in Houston newspaper.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2011/04/cage_match_ted_nugent_vs_gener_1.php

Tax charts and music -- including the Internal Revenue Boogie, for today through Monday.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/04/15/tax-related-facts-music/

Mr. Epp & the Calculations anthology Ridiculing the Apocalypse, one of Mark Arm's pre-Mudhoney bands. I had a 7-inch from them a long time ago, "Of course I'm happy ... Why?"

Some of its live from a cassette recorder, all of it worth no time at all.

Not quite of it is almost reasonably recorded, their high point of which was "Mohawk Man," a mumbling mock of the hardcore audience which a band bio page says went to number 1 on Rodney on the ROQ, apparently true. Now it's a bit too hard to make out the lyrics.

The rest of the stuff is noisy blurting hardcore no individual song of which is long enough to be aggravating. L-o-t-s of fuzztone and noise. On the other hand, the band's aim was to be sarcastic and humorous, defeated if you weren't there by the almost blanket inability to get across a lyric. Except on "Mohawk Man."

In the early Eighties I recall liking this a lot more than I do now.

Brief but amusing interview with Bobby Liebling of Pentagram.

http://www.ugo.com/music/pentagram-interview

Here's the trailer for the Pentagram movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Kk5K1mLmg&feature=related

Did it get unfurled at SXSW?

Here's one for xhuxk. Have you heard of or seen the Hot Things/Shit City High when they came or come to Austin? Houston band, changed name from latter to former, although the latter makes them a lot more searchable and marketable through Google. Stumbled into their stuff yesterday and it's fairly decent hooky Stooges ramalama. But boy do they need better marketing. You wouldn't know they actually have a record that, from what I was able to cadge off it, is good.

Entertaining intro when they were Shit City High here:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/01/artist_of_the_week_shit_city_h.php

Could have had best T-shirts ever, I think.

They don't sound like the Stooges as much as Bad Wizard, a band whose debut album was fucking killer. Too bad the second one sucked. There's a third, but I never heard it. I'd like them better if the vocalist was screechier. Her voice is too low for the material.

I recall Bad Wizard. The debut was great and then ... you pegged it. I reviewed their second far more highly than it deserved, in retrospect. One of the guitarists in the Hot Things backed Texas Terri Bomb in the Stiff Ones and there's some definite overlap in the sound.

First I've heard of Hot Things or Shit City High. (And first I've thought of Bad Wizard in years.)

Not sure if the Pentagram doc played Austin last month, though it'd make sense if it did, since obviously lots of rock films debut at SXSW, and Pentagram were scheduled for a show or two.

Caught Heartless Bastards for the first time on Austin City Limits. They were advertised as rock and roll and I remember some critical cant from a couple years ago to the effect that there was something on the same order from Erika Wennerstrom. Kept waiting for the rock to happen. It never did. Thirty minutes of grooveless trudging droning stuff of no discernible hook with Wennerstrom singing over the top as she pulled it along. I completely understand why this would have been big on NPR.

I pulled this off Rhapsody.

"Wailing, crying and whispering, she's like a mutant fusion of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and old-school Bob Seger, back when the dude was howling about the 'Ramblin' Gamblin' Man.'"

The latter part is serious delusion.

With a record company like Digital Warfare, the Hot Things don't need enemies. If there's any benefit to actually being on this label -- it's Zeke's -- I can't deduce what it might be.

The website actually hides its Hot Things' page.

http://digitalwarfarerecords.com/hotthings.html

That's right. Hides. Presumably, because you can listen to the album there. Fair to often very good record. Shame about the anti-promotion. It's like the deal was this: You can put our label's name on your virtual record and we'll bury it.

"Destroy Uranus" definitely gets into my P&J poll if I fill it out next year.

Ted hating on teh "homosexuals."

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/04/19/nugent-ticked-about-bryant-fine-emits-standard-slurs/

Detroit Free Press outdoors columnist rips Nugent a new one:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/04/17/this-one-hurt-him/

Media Matters mirroring the Ted Nugent beat:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104200002

So, I am absurdly behind on talking about all the old hard rock I've been listening to on this thread; probably too behind to ever catch up. Been getting my ass totally kicked by Cold Chisel's 1982 Circus Animals (has way more kick than the other LP I've got by them) and Tyla Gang's 1978 Yachtless (which George has discussed, though I don't think he mentioned the cut on side two that sounds like it might be the best Thin Lizzy rip ever); been loving David Werner's 1974 Whizz Kid (his teenage-I-think Bowie-glam record -- title track and "The Death Of Me Yet" are especially great, though I think I might still like his self-titled 1979 skinny-tie new wave LP -- discussed here last year -- even more); took me 33 years to learn that Ian Dury's 1978 New Boots And Panties ends with three or so end-of-the-Cockney-pier punk songs that sound almost like oi! before its time; pulled out Thundermug's 1973 Strikes and it was way better than I'd remembered; especially love all the short early-Who-as-punk-prog songs on the first side.

Also, inspired by George talking about them upthread a few weeks back, I pulled out The Quick's 2003 Rev-Ola UK reissue CD Untold Rock Stories, and I've been playing it a lot in the car. I've never heard their actual album (albums? whatever -- guess there was also a "fan club only" EP; is that like the '70s equivalent of Record Store Day limited editions or what?) But this CD is really great. 10-song Kim Fowley-produced Mercury Records demo recorded in 1976 is them at their most blatantly Sparks-arch-and-swishy, even though they seem to insist that was unintentional; also has most of the CD's best songs (best one maybe "My Purgatory Years") and the two best cover songs (4 Seasons' "Rag Doll" which the liner notes compare to Nazareth covering Joni Mitchell, and Beatles' "It Won't Be Long," the arrangement of which they claim Redd Kross later swiped.) Nine-song Elektra Records demo, recorded 1977-78,ups the Who-powerchord quotient and moves away from the Sparks shtick a bit but has a hard-to-take "Over The Rainbow" cover and fewer memorable songs overall; still pretty good, though, and "Jimmy Too Bad" sounds a lot like early Boomtown Rats, a couple years early. And the three "bonus tracks" are some of the best things on the CD -- "Angel" might be the stompingest approximation of Slade's music-hall glam I've ever heard from an American band, super super catchy. And the live 1976 "Master Race" is a pretty hilarious call-and-response audience-participation Nazi joke; I expect they would have heard the Dictators' "Master Race Rock," released a year earlier, by that point, but maybe not.

Ian Grey, the bassist, who yeah, used to post on this board (apparently he's a film critic and fiction writer by trade) and drummer Danny Benair both write entertaining liner notes, though Grey's are much more coherent. They say they were fans of the Who, Kinks, Creation, Small Faces, Golden Earring, Blue Swede (really? were they any good?? I only know "Hooked On A Feeling"), Move, Ramones, Flamin' Groovies. Danny compares Ian's piano playing in "Too Bad" to Ian Hunter,and compares the foot-stomping in "You Give me Heat" to early Cheap Trick ("Bun E. Carlos would come to our gigs with a cassette player, and tape them, isn't that illegal?") Apparently Ian and one of the two Dannies (Wilde I think) went on to be in a new wave powerpop band called Great Buildings, who I think Scott might've mentioned on another thread last week. Danny Benair wound up in Tim Ellison faves the Three O'Clock then became an publishing exec at Polygram. (Speaking of Tim, I've also been giving car-play lately to the Sparksish Milk And Cookies CD-R which I'm pretty sure he burned for me when he reviewed it for me back at the Voice several years ago. Also very good, though I'm pretty sure the Quick pulled the Sparks routine off with more hooks and hard rock.)

Actually, got that influences list just slightly wrong -- Flamin' Groovies' Shake Some Action and the Ramones' debut are what a "recovering Quick-a-holic" named Gary Stewart says in the CD notes that people in his circle were mainly listening to through the summer of 1976, along with the Quick's Mercury demo.

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/dictators/video/science-gone-too-far_-1932576846.html

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/earth-quake/video/rattle-snake-shake_-2105044858.html

Gotta love Earth Quake rockin' the bell bottoms in '74. If there's Earth Quake at Winterland, there's also gotta be old footage of Y&T when they were still long form Yesterday & Today from the same time on there. The truncated version of "Train Ride" is great from the Winterland show scott posted.

Found a Quick EP on-line that probably share something with untold stories. The tunes are 'less' major label than on Mondo Deco but still polished. Guitars are a bit louder.

Was a fan club thing called In Tune With Our Times, maybe produced by Beck's dad?

Contains "Pretty Please" which splits a difference between Sparks and Cheap Trick, "You Yeah You," which is great Brit-style glam, and "Jimmy Too Bad" -- which I don't really care about.

I recall Ian posting amusing comments into a chat about Starz (from a Quick gig with them) and, Jobriath.

As for Yachtless, I think xhuxk will have to agree there's some Ian Hunter-doing-a-Bob-Dylan
thing on it, particularly in the phrasing. Songs, probably like, "The Young Lords." "Whizz Kids" seems a bit inspired by Mott the Hoople. I'm betting you mean "Lost Angels" as the Thin Lizzy rip.
But the record's full of good to great moments. "On the Street" is something Kim Fowley would have one of his put-together bands like the Hollywood Stars record. "Don't Shift a Gear" -- greasy rock 'n' roll.

Have been listening to The Donnas' 16 Greatest Hits, which is re-records of their older tunes and some things not included on the last record. Like it a lot, more later probably. The early stuff, gotta say they were really good at Ramones pastiche.

Anyone heard much Sherbet? Was looking through some old import records today and saw a couple of their albums. They later became The Sherbs and, according to their Wikipedia page, were more new wave. But as Sherbet they were apparently a pretty big group in Australia in the '70s.

Scott and I talked about them on a different thread a couple years ago:

SHERBET "Howzat" (Super catchy commercial not-quite-hard AOR; not even sure how I'd subclassify this -- like, somewhere in between yacht-rock and pomp-rock, the missing link I never even imagined between "Moonlight Feels Right" and "Sister Christian" or something? Doesn't even sound especially Euro.)
― xhuxk, Saturday, January 17, 2009 3:14 PM

xp Or maybe it's SHERBERT (that's how The Rolling Stone Record Guide spells it): "Australia's top pop group racked up nine consecutive gold albums and 18 hit singles Down Under, but it has yet to make much on an impression in the U.S. Led by a singer (Daryl Braithwaite) with a voice somewhere between Blood Sweat and Tears' David Clayton-Thomas and Chicago's Peter Cetera. Sherbert has a knack for hooks, and plays in a variety of styles, but it's nothing Three Dog Night hasn't done better."
Never heard of them 'til today!
― xhuxk, Saturday, January 17, 2009 4:36 PM

i have the sherbert album with howzat on it and i never liked it much. was hoping it would be way more glammier and fun than it is.
― scott seward, Saturday, January 17, 2009 4:50 PM

i'll play it again though. sometimes i'm not in the right frame of mind. or i only play one side of a record...there are many factors involved.
― scott seward, Saturday, January 17, 2009 4:53 PM

i was kinda hoping they would be the aussie rollers or at least the aussie rosetta stone, but not on that album. who is the aussie rollers?
― scott seward, Saturday, January 17, 2009 4:57 PM

I also bought the Sherbs' quasi new wave album The Skill, with their 1981 almost-hit "I Have The Skill" (went #61 in the U.S., just like "Howzat" had in '76) for $1 a couple years ago; see it in dollar bins all the time, actually. I probably play it once every eight or nine months, and every time, it sounds good enough to keep, but not good enough to leave a huge impression. So take that for what it's worth. Next time I put it on, maybe I can be more specific.

Or maybe I should say "not good enough to leave any (lasting) impression." But I do always like it when it's on. Definitely not worth shelling out more than a buck, though.

And oh yeah, George, I definitely so hear the Mott-type Dylan-doing-hard-rock stylings you've talked about on a lot of that Tyla Gang LP. (Maybe no coincidence, either, that Mott had their own, different, "Whizz Kid" song.)

So Scott, are the Movies who you recommend a couple times upthread the same ones who put out a self-titled LP on Arista in 1976, or some different Movies? Because I just played that s/t today after paying a dollar for it yesterday, and I'm not getting anything from it at all, at least not yet -- doesn't even seem like rock music to me, much less hard rock. They are very twee (well, so were the Fabulous Poodles kind of, who you said you liked them better than, but the Fab Poos were also really catchy and had good jokes.) These guys do look fairly goofy on the LP cover though. And they credit all sorts of fancy instruments (Mellotron, Arp synth, "Bruce" harp whatever that is, kazoo, mandolin, violin, chimes, shakers, "toys"), so maybe I'll pick up on what's interesting about them next time I listen. So far though, I am inclined to agree with Dave Marsh who gave the album an admittedly promising one star in the RS Record Guide: "For everyone who fondly remembers the new suit of clothes that good little boys once got to wear for the holidays. Clean pop music, but without the drama or the humor of soap opera. Compared to this, Barbie dolls are radical chic." (Well, actually, I have no idea what the second half of that is even supposed to mean, but I kind of like his line about the suit.)

wrong group. i was talking about the british movies. not the u.s. one.

Whew. Okay, this goes to the sell pile.

Actually, the Fabulous Poodles had way goofier LP cover photos too, come to think of it. (On the back of the Movies one, they just look like buskers.)

i don't actually own all the u.k. movies albums. i like the later ones. India and Motor Motor Motor. those are both early 80's. their first album came out in 1975.

and i probably do prefer the motors to the movies. just listening to the motors the other day. sounded great.

i always think of the romeos when i think of the poodles. my brother was bringing that stuff home back then. but he brought home the dickies too so i didn't really need the romeos OR the poodles.

Unintentionally hilarious now, the NRA convention was in Pittsburgh this weekend and Ted was shooting his mouth off.

He criticised 'America-hating' President Barack Obama ...

Mr Nugent, known as the Motor City Madman, told the crowd he regretted never serving in the Vietnam War and said the best way to honour wounded or dead troops is to 'use the freedom they provided us,' including owning guns.

He said that if hunters voted together, Obama and the 'Mao Zedong fan club in the White House' would be evicted and Attorney General Eric Holder would 'face a firing squad.'

He complained about gun control but I wasn't aware there's been any actual gun control in the country for the last ten years.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382830/Ted-Nugent-We-turn-heat-gun-control-lobby.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Too choice, I'm waiting for his column on the death of bin Laden.

Notice Nugent pulled back from including the President in the firing squad statement since that might have had the Secret Service pay him a visit.

Mr Nugent said: 'If it was up to me, if you uttered the word "gun control," we'd put you in jail.

^let freedom ring

Thread denizens might enjoy Broken Heart Syndrome, the new album by Voodoo Circle. German power metallers (and a British vocalist) doing songs in the style of Rainbow, Coverdale-era Deep Purple, and early Whitesnake, with some Yngwie-ish guitar solos thrown in. Really good stuff, produced with a vintage late '70s sound, too.

"Summer Love," an Australian number one for Sherbet in '75, is a really good one. Has a lot of that mid-70s bubblegum style I associate with Rollers hits or "Beach Baby," but then Sherbet was more of a hard rock band. Definitely unusual and cool to hear those things converge in such a good way. Also has this one repeating segment with some great Move-style riff rock plus melodicism.

Sherbs album is about as marginal a keeper as a keeper-album can be -- like I said above, generally listenable start to finish, keyboard-hoked medium-hard fake new wave motivational Top Gun self-actualization rock, but also severely lacking in brain cells. Catchiest tracks are the side-openers, "I Have The Skill" (the "hit") and "No Turning Back." Pretty sure I like the first side -- some of which sounds like Huey Lewis and the News with bigger powerchords -- more than the second, where they go more into Survivor/Journey pomp, and in "I'm OK" cute early '80s quasi-wave Rush maybe.

Still like it more than the self-titled Silver Condor LP from 1981 I bought, totally bleh and limp despite Earl Slick playing guitar. A sort of semi-rockabilly country-rocker on the second side jumped out; sounded like something CMT might play now, but even that wasn't memorable and I didn't even bother to check which cut it was.

Cold Chisel LP I mentioned above, Circus Animals, is still in steady rotation in my house, and was reminding me a lot of Nazareth this morning. Seems to have a few toiling working-man numbers, but I haven't attended too closely to the lyrics yet. Plods some here and there (sometimes very obsessively), and there's at least one power ballad I would've left on the cutting room floor, but the two side closers are both brutal.

Good morning & a bump. Cursing the Oil Men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1bRMQ50VKg

the NRA convention was in Pittsburgh this weekend and Ted was shooting his mouth off

I love the implications of this sentence!

Mr Nugent said: 'If it was up to me, if you uttered the word "gun control," we'd put you in jail.

Speaking of which, that's actually two words. Ted's one of those kindsa guys we all meet too many times. Someone who is thick but who thinks he's really smart - in this case because publishers tell him so.

Just in time... best interview, ever.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/05/19/creepy-mean-old-man-tv-nugent-on-cnn/

Financial Times humor writer reflects on the imminent end of the world and the believers in it now seen in the streets.

As proof the end may indeed be nigh he points to ominously weird things, they key piece which was Nugent's appearance on Huckabee.

But I would like to make special mention of one particular harbinger of doom, if only because I suspect many of you missed it. It took place last weekend just as news of the arrest of the International Monetary Fund’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn was spreading around the world.

I’m talking about Huckabee, the Fox News Channel talk show hosted by Mike Huckabee ...

Still clad in a business suit and tie, Mr Huckabee joined Mr Nugent on Cat Scratch Fever ... Mr Huckabee was only minutes away from turning down a chance to seek the highest office in the land, and as I watched him getting down with “the Nuge”, I wondered how this sort of thing looked to those sad souls on the streets who believe that everything will be wiped clean tomorrow.

All of it's fairly amusing:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/024c506a-8247-11e0-961e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1MpvlOmK9

“Arnold Schwarzenneger is a very physical and sexual man,” she said, “with a voracious appetite that likes a lot of physical attention.”

* The London Sun went a step further, claiming Gigi landed in the hospital because Arnold liked his romps rough. A Sun source said after one “Raw Deal,” Gigi said she was left “hurt and embarrassed.”

Too much Vienna Wiener?

“[Gigi Goyette] said Arnold was unbelievably frisky and that she had to go to hospital he was so rough. She was embarrassed turning up with an injury like that,” a “friend” said.

Coincidentally, we have a song for that:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/Hey_Cutie.mp3

Someone named GiGi, 'too much vienna wiener,' riches of embarrassment.

Have been listening to a copy of Slade's Whatever Happened to Slade, from '77 when the band's popularity really sagged in the UK. It's their heaviest album by far, showing a real swing into heavy metal. Nobody's Fool which preceded it had not done well and the band decided it needed to get heavier. However, it didn't work. Polydor wasn't interested, it got no US release, and Chas Chandler, the band's manager, had to put it out on his own label, Barn.

They'd have to wait three years, for Reading in '80, for a resumption. The show, which they got when Ozzy dropped out, revived them. However, the delivery and tone of Whatever Happened to Slade was the sound they took onstage in 1980.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/watt_dabney/4172227037/

I like the lot of it although there's nothing like C'mon Feel the Noise or Gudby t' Jane on it.
There's still a lot of stomp, Holder's voice is still the most pulverizing scream in Blighty, and the guitar -- mostly by Dave Hill is a bit unique in that he's obviously using a fuzztone. And that gives the wall of noise a sewage-y quality that's just right for what they were doing.

The album opener, "Be," is the best thing on it. The group vocal, stop/start beats, go completely over the top within the first two minutes of the thing.

This line from Rolling Stones on the new White Denim record, a bit of overstatement:

White Denim spit psychedelia, hard blues, boogie, prog rock and fusion riff ...

No hard blues or boogie in the band. But the song featured, Drug, does sound like second-third
tier Brit prog, something Nektar could have done. A few years ago I reviewed their first ep for
PTW. It was unlistenable. Half a decade of practice has made them better by an order of magnitude.
"(Ripping) flute solos" also features in the short review. Don't get your hopes up. Jethro Tull or
even Focus, it's not. Maybe It's a Beautiful Day.

Still not gripped enough to spend any time on it, though.

Anybody here familiar with Ancestors? I think they're from L.A.; on their last record, they played stretched out prog-hard rock sludge with lots of Deep Purple-ish organ. This time out, there's a lot more acoustic guitar and general gentleness, but when the electric guitars and organ kick in during the epic third track (of three), it's the best Pink Floyd record since Live at Pompeii. On Tee Pee.

Oh, yeah; the last album was called Of Sound Mind, and the new one is called Invisible White. Their first record was called Neptune With Fire. They're all good.

I've been liking that new Ancestors record, too, which surprised me -- could easily imagine it on SST in the mid '80s or Man's Ruin in the early '00s, and yeah, the Purple/Heep organ clearly puts it over/sets it apart. Feels somehow like an instrumental rock record, for some reason, though I guess technically it isn't -- the vocals, inasmuch as they're there, fly right past me, but also don't detract anything, at least so far. Definitely preferred it to the Atomic Bitchwax CD that came in the same package from Tee Pee (which wasn't horrible, either, though I doubt I'll be playing that one again unless I wind up having to write about it.)

Had played the new White Denim (who get lots of press here in their hometown Austin) twice in the background when the advance arrived, and it sounded better than I would have expected (had taken them to be an indie nerd band, when really they sound more like a hippie jam band), but not so much better that I felt like exerting the energy to figure out why. So I filed it, but now that George mentioned it I pulled it back out -- it's on now, still sounds fine but far from earth-shattering.

New metal album on Meteor City I've been not hating is by Swedes called New Keepers Of The Water Towers -- probably most lumpable with Mastodon, bands like that. I enjoy the playing, pretty much consistently. But the barking and grunting almost always gets in the way. Most memorable cut: The closer, "The Sword In The Stone."

Been liking the new Too Slim and the Tail Draggers -- boogie rock from the Pacific Northwest -- better than any of the above. My Rhapsody review:

http://www.rhapsody.com/timtooslimlangford/shiver-3#albumreview

And I'm still liking the new Nazareth even more than that:

http://www.rhapsody.com/nazareth/big-dogz#albumreview

Other really good album by an aging classic rocker I've heard this year is John Waite's Rough And Tumble, which definitely has a few hard rock moments -- the title cut opener, the AC/DC rip "Sweet Road Island Red" about a curvy under-aged "mulatto" (he uses that word, which makes me wince almost as much as the stuff about her age does) who stands up to dudes and moves to New Orleans, and "Better Off Gone," which is probably the album's best guitar song overall. Also really love "Evil," which is kind of a 1978-Stones-vintage rock-disco move. Last couple cuts ("Peace Of Mind," "Hanging Tree") are pretentious in an entertaining way.

"Sweet Rhode Island Red", I meant -- which I guess means she's a chicken.

Just keep slipping further behind on talking about old stuff here, but here are a few purchases recently listed on the "buy that for a dollar" thread:

The B'zz - Get Up (Epic 1982 -- feat. some former Boyzz)

George has talked this up for ages, obviously. I like how, especially now that I see the giant bumblebee artwork on the cover, there name could either be pronounced "The Beeeees" or "The Buzzzzz," and either one would work. No idea which is right. My copy came with a yellow press one-sheet that also says, in addition to three ex-Boyzz, there are two guys who used to be in some lineup of Steppenwolf. Also claims they were (at least up to 1982) "the only unsigned band ever to appear on" American Bandstand. Album is much more commercial AOR/less biker-greasechained than the Boyzz were--early '80s Bryan Adams style hard pop and proto-hair metal power ballads and everything--but I still like it, especially when they stretch out like John Cougar's band did in "I Need A Lover" (hey, they come from Chicago -- not far from Southern Indiana right?) Opening cut "Get Up Get Angry" always slays me, but there are a couple more at or very near that level.

Duke Jupiter - White Knuckle Ride (Morocco 1984)

Low-I.Q. early '80s style butt-mustache-rock AOR, kind of a cross between that era of Huey Lewis and Survivor, maybe, with Journey tossed in at more reflective moments. So: dumb fun. Two of the best cuts are saved for the end --- "Me And Michelle," basically about how the singer wanted something to happen with Michelle but nothing did so now he's got no story to tell, and "(I've Got A) Little Black Book," which as my wife correctly pointed out rips off its riffs wholesale from
"Carry On My Wayward Son." (We disagreed about whether it rocked harder or not; she took Kansas there.) Side One closer "Backfire" also a bit of a rocker, iirc.

Granati Bros. - G Force (A&M 1979 - fake Ramones? I remember they were on one of A&M's new wave comps around then)

A disappointment so far -- short songs, but not new wave or hard rock enough, and too much faux-reggae. Definitely like "Nothin'", though, and maybe the rest will grow on me. Do feel greasy-haired spaghetti-fed siblings (+ one pal) in leather jackets and Romantics mullets should do better than this stuff, though.

Bad To The Bone - s/t (Megadisc 1988 - Dutch bar-band looking dudes with plenty of promising fake-punk rebellious titles: "Slow Suicide," "Car With No Reverse," "Lucifer's Boogie," "Lost Generation," "Tear Down The White House," etc.)

Didn't notice until it was playing that one of the four Dutch boys (the one affecting the meanest lean against the car, and with the best holes in his jeans) is wearing a Dr. Feelgood shirt under his jacket. They earn it, too! Hard pub rock -- at least as tough as the Inmates/Godfathers/Screaming Blue Messiahs, if not the Bishops, and in a couple cuts I get the idea they might be able to play in the Bishops' league. Plus they kick a good cover of Don Covay's soul hit "Mercy Mercy."

"the only unsigned band ever to appear on" American Bandstand. Album is much more commercial AOR/less biker-greasechained than the Boyzz were

Actually seems to be true. I saw that episode.

Stigliano on Fireballet's Two, Too (discussed way upthread back in January):

http://black2com.blogspot.com/2011/05/so-how-did-you-celebrate-bob-dylans.html

this album is cool. picked it up today. from 1970.

http://78.46.76.238/pix/20070304/190089004549.jpg

"The obscure Wazoo LP on an equally obscure Michigan label is strange indeed - the personnel as listed above is sketchy due to the lack of info on the gatefold sleeve, with its welter of named and unnamed photos, but Robert DiPasquale had previously been in Bocky and The Visions. Musically the album contains an odd mix of brassy jazz-rock with The Fugs and lots of weird s**t thrown in: anti-war and anti-establishment jibes, some nice baroque touches, a soupcon of avant-garde, some heady lyrics, and barrages of war and off-the-wall sound effects... all of which make for a challenging listen. Noteworthy moments include: the eleven minute jazz-psych trip of The Way I See It; the bluesy fuzz of Sleep On; the amazing bad-trip noise of Arnie Funny Far Fackor which should only be listened to in a padded room; and the excellent heavy fuzz-and-feedback blast of BH Man that closes the album in a more accessible acid-rock vein.

George Katsakis recalls:- "I was also the leader of a group formed in 1958 called the Royaltones. I used the name Konstantine because it was my father's name. The Wazoo album was recorded in Novi, Michigan at a studio that was owned by Bob Adell. The studio was located in a building that is now known as the Novi Expo Center and Arnie of Arniefunnyfarfacker was the recording engineer"."

got this today too. love this. polish proggy power trio. 1974. seriously cool guitar album.

http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildatar.php?itemnr=150519459202

oops, can't see that. SBB from poland.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KcJj6wN1MA4/SGnZFv2cf4I/AAAAAAAACXo/aWuMuLd38kk/s1600/sbb1.jpg

there

A Memorial Day post

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2011/05/30/guitar-center-memorial-day-sale-made-in-china/