In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time

Just realized what that pre-chorus guitar bit reminds me of: duh, "Panama"! Their whole thing really feels like Van Halen with less chops and an obviously less compelling frontman. That's not such a horrible thing to be, though.

I mean, even the way they say "Round and Round!" is kinda like "Pan-a-ma!" I'm sure I'm not the first to observe this, and it doesn't ruin the song or anything, but...man.

in 1984 p much every "hard rock" act felt like Van Halen with less chops and an obviously less compelling frontman. imo "round and round" gets away with it a lot better than most.

that said, a direct panama crib is unlikely -- Out of the Cellar was released only a couple of months after 1984

As probably the only person in this thread who read Stephen Pearcy's book, let me clear some stuff up. Ratt was an evolution of Pearcy's late '70s hard rock party band Mickey Ratt, who were direct rivals to Van Halen on the Sunset Strip/Southern California party/bar scene at the time. VH got the major label deal, MR didn't, so by the time Ratt got signed in the early '80s, Pearcy was already a grizzled and somewhat embittered veteran.

i really like this song but now I find the words so distractingly terrible that I have a hard time listening to it

I mean, lyrically honestly it's no worse than Kiss but some reason it really, really bugs me

Just read them, yeah, basically word salad but somehow less bothersome to me than Judas Priest's gibberish a while back, although a lot of lines could slot into that song without raising an eyebrow ("I've got a way, we're gonna prove it tonight," "Like Romeo to Juliet, time and time," and of course "Tightened our belts abuse ourselves / Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf"). Who knew it was so tough to write hard rock lyrics?

post just give it time

goddamn autocorrect XPOST

i'll take priest's gibberish any day of the week

while we're on the subject of not very good lyrics by grizzled veterans:

SONG #38: SCORPIONS "NO ONE LIKE YOU"

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

Alterna-kids loved Ratt when they came out, glam pop metal but they had 60's style choruses. I still listen to Out of the Cellar.

My favourite Scorpions is the 70s stuff but I love this song.

scorps rule

No One Like You: Strong opening. Kinda familiar. I associate these guys with big 80s anthems, specifically "Rock You Like a Hurricane," but this sounds more like 70s rock - could be tumbling into "No More Mister Nice Guy," "Crazy On You," or even "Slow Ride" at any time. And huh...with this dreamier guitar and dreamy singing it's sounding REALLY familiar.

Yeah, I've heard this chorus - knew the sequence of notes his voice was going to hit even if I didn't have the words to hang on it. So I've heard it, but not paid attention to it. D'oh.

What's most striking about it are the verses, with the sparer guitar and the earnest, almost croony, Freddie Mercury type singing. There's a "cooler," more atmospheric song in there. The guitar stuff is cool, kinda neat on the soloing, but nothing I couldn't get elsewhere, and they haven't quite got the knack for doing the pummeling Boston chorus without it getting wearisome after a couple of go-rounds. Maybe I'm not in the mood, or maybe the theme is just too generic for it to feel like the song really needs to exist. An indifferent sideways thumb, tipping downward.

(I may also just be disappointed because at first glance I thought it was "No One Likes You," which is a much more promising title.)

boooooooo *throws rotten fruit at u*

it's the Scorps man, sideways thumb does not compute

;_;

"cooler more atmospheric song in there" - melodically, always gets me thinking of the "what do you do when everybody's insane?" section of Heart's "Crazy on You" - the part I will still sit through the song to hear.

the cooler more atmospheric song you're thinking of is "bringing on the heartbreak" (1981) but yeah there is no meh in scorpions

Love this song and never turn it off if it comes on the radio. Shows how arrangement, variation and conviction can take you a long, long way when you only are working with three chords.Klaus Meine's Teutonic mangling of English vowels cracks me up, though -- when I was first hearing this song in the 80s, I always thought, in the chorus, he was saying "I am mention the things we'd do" and was like, "?????"

Guitar mags of the era were in LOVE with Rudolf Schenker. Couldn't interview him often enough.

Huh, maybe I should give this one another chance!

If it's any consolation, I'm almost done revising that paper about Brutalist telephone architecture!

We need to celebrate the paper's completion with a Styx twofer.

i forgot about how great this thread is, please do resume.

sorry about my absence. i, um, have NOT had too much time on my hands lately. but styx twofer coming up shortly...

yessssssssss

I kinda wanna hear this infamous song about the pissed off trees tbh

well, the playlist in front of me says "styx twofer," and rush's "the trees" technically isn't anywhere in the queue for this thread, but if that's what you need after writing about brutalist telephone architecture, who am i to deny you?

(also, correcting my numbering system which seems to have gone slightly awry upthread.)

SONG #40: RUSH "THE TREES"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnC88xBPkk

dammit. trying again:

SONG #40: RUSH "THE TREES"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnC88xBPkkc

The Trees is really quite a bad song. If I didn't know it was Rush I'd think it was some random b-level prog band.

AWESOME

(not a review of the song, but a response to the revival)

(will hop on this tomorrow, aw yeah)

The Trees: So, I should say before I start that, based on the discussion last summer, and Sandy's complaints, what I've been expecting is a kind of hoary Ayn Rand fable, but told in a ponderous, Tolkien-wannabe fashion by the shrill, lecturing martinets of Rush (or Styx, who I apparently got mixed up for a while there, though I really do know the difference!). Basically, I'm thinking "Battle of Evermore," but about Republican Ents, and probably with some awkward guitar climaxes tossed about. Let's see!

Hmmm, nice little acoustic opening. Good for a forest song. Haha, unrest in the forest. Well, we're already off to a dopey start, and man I hate that bass sound. Rumbling into action now - TROUBLE WITH THE MAPLES!

Oh mannn this is living up to all my hopes. I never anticipated him laying out the various tree species in different camps! Figured it would be like the trees coming to life and marching against the people, a Birnam Forest thing maybe. Instead it's like "At the Zoo" but with pissed off trees... I hope the Lorax shows up at some point.

Godddddddd these are pathetic politics, won't someone feel sorry for the mighty oaks forced to listen to the complaints of the maples? Also it's a wretched analogy anyway, pretty sure that maples and oaks don't have any real problem coexisting or we would have heard about it by now. The synth break, though, is the first musically pleasant part since the acoustic intro. They definitely saved a "B" song for this lame material, just genuinely not a very hooky or convincing recording. And that bass feels so dubbed in by someone learning to play... again very much in "Shreds" video territory. Okay, the little pauses to let one cutesy guitar line slip in (circa 3:40) are fine, if not exactly rockin'.

omg SO THE MAPLES FORMED A UNION dyyyyying

...

wow. so the maples... acquired hatches, axes and saws? And, what, hoped the wind would blow them in the general direction of the oaks? They're fucking trees, they can't saw things. I mean if they're ambulant and have opposable thumbs, why wouldn't they just go someplace else? Why wouldn't the oaks run away or defend themselves? I expect at least some kind of logic or internal consistency, even in a dumb fable. I looooooooooove that these guys think that's a devastating twist ending, like they've got the next Richard Cory here - speaking again of Simon & Garfunkel - wonder if there's actually a connection in the desire to do "adult" lyrics about "themes" etc....

Well, overall, that was basically entertaining in the same way as gawking at batshit rightwing cartoons is, when the cartoons aren't too offensive, just dumb and badly drawn. If it were an actual classic rock staple where I lived for any length of time, I'd hate it with a passion, but as just some weird album track or something it's just a major groaner. Thumbs down obviously, but don't mind having heard it.

The lyrics relate a short story about a conflict between maple and oak trees in the forest. The lyricist/drummer Neil Peart was asked in the April/May 1980 Modern Drummer magazine if there was a message in the lyrics. Peart said, "No. It was just a flash. I was working on an entirely different thing when I saw a cartoon picture of these trees carrying on like fools. I thought, 'What if trees acted like people?' So I saw it as a cartoon really, and wrote it that way. I think that's the image that it conjures up to a listener or a reader. A very simple statement."

http://www.osler.com/uploadedImages/maple-leaf-icon.gif

The video is a different performance than the record, which is a little hard to tell because Rush tend to play every exactly the same every time. The record is a bit better. Maybe not enough to change anyone's mind, but the bass is better recorded and the whole thing fits together a bit better. I like the "rockin' the 1812 Overture" instrumental section and a lot of the arpeggiated lyrics. Peart has made clear in some interview in the last ten years that he considers his political lyrics from the band's first twenty years to be embarrassing juvenilia.

arpeggiated guitar. a bit a bit a bit my kingdom for an edit function.

Listening to the album version, I guess. It's definitely a less grating mix, if obviously not a less stupid song. Still think it's kinda dinkily-recorded but I guess that's just their whole sound. With a less dopey theme I guess it coulda been a passable song, though never a classic.

Youtube comments under this are a hoot, just an endless series of people bringing up the politics and others insisting that because it was inspired by a cartoon it has no meaning.

I looooooooooove that these guys think that's a devastating twist ending, like they've got the next Richard Cory here

oh god did i love that song when i was a kid. it was like the next step after nursery rhymes. a dark, grownup nursery rhyme.

The video is a different performance than the record

ohhh. i had no idea. this thread is all about album versions, or at least whatever version would get played on classic rock radio.

and now, on to our styx twofer.

SONG #41: STYX "TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs

the dennis deyoung hand gestures from 0:09 to 0:15!

Always got a Mark Hamill feeling from Tommy Shaw. Maybe it was the time.

"Is this cable access?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_6GZME1u5A

Youtube comments under this are a hoot, just an endless series of people bringing up the politics and others insisting that because it was inspired by a cartoon it has no meaning.

I wouldn't say that it has no meaning per se but I don't really see it as a libertarian/Randan allegory. I'm also not sure that he's saying that the hatchets, axes, and saws were wielded by the maples. Def not his best lyrics by any stretch though.

sp: "Randian"

You may be right about who's wielding the hatchets (I guess the maples recruited some people, somehow?) but as to the message... err... well, YMMV but to me it seems pretty straightforward on paper - bit of sarcastic doggerel "sending up" the requests for "equality" from a bunch of whiners when everything was just fine before. Even if it didn't go out of its way to mention "unions," it's at best a little comfort food for the self-important teenage nerd hero-in-his-own-mind, oh yeah, all the norms they just want to tear down my oakish majesty because I'm better than them etc. There are maybe some bits that, in the text, could go either way (i.e. he could be sending up the disinterested oaks as a bunch of Tories wondering what the big deal is about poverty, pip pip), but that's cancelled out by the last verse and the way he mockingly yelps out "oppression!" I guess I can't figure what it would mean if it's not this little underthought political cartoon.

Now, for Styx...

Too Much Time On My Hands: Awesome start. I hope this song is in THX. Digging the little synth thing too, drums seem kinda clunky. It's not quite as rhythmically funky as it'd like to be, but I like this kind of bouncy synth thing and, at least on headphones, it sounds nice and full even if they have the most boring drummer alive. Now that he's singing it's starting to sound naggingly familiar but there's nothing about the backing track that rings a bell.

Would be an interesting comparison with "Eminence Front," which was a big stretch for that band but hangs together amazingly - here these guys don't really seem 100% comfortable until they get to their core thing with the big big chords and the overdubbed vocals. BUT - I'm kinda liking this. At least it keeps changing things up - several cool things have happened while I was typing that last part. I like the abrupt jump to the solo, and the solo itself is all right, not the most exciting one we've encountered here but not exactly boring. It really falls apart for a second after that, coming back from the "haa-aaaands" with the evidently surprised drummer bonking away and hoping somebody will remember to get the song started back up. Yikes.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't know this. It's not bad. Good little second-tier single for the drive home. To be honest it actually makes me appreciate "Urgent" more, which is probably a closer comparison than "Eminence Front." Big 70s act trying to grasp New Wave, and, to my ear, trying to use it the way 60s acts started using 50s rock - that is, actually as a back-to-basics approach, "let's get it down to three guys with instruments on a stage, just playing an ordinary song about romance and sexual frustration, like when we first started out!" I gotta say I think Foreigner pull it off better but this isn't embarrassing except for the above post-solo foul-up and the fact that the drummer is apparently so hapless they had to paste in a tick-tock sound effect to try and suggest a tightly-wired, time-passing quality, like nobody felt they could ask the guy to like, try and throw in some hi-hat or something.

Digging it more on the second listen tbh, enjoying the details of the songwriting (and glancing upscreen at the, er, adorable video). Highlights: the intro, certain of the unexpected lyrical turns, like where he's drunk watching soap operas in the afternoon, and the really weird phrasing of "Is it any wonder I'm not a criminal? Is it any wonder I'm not in jail?" Lowlight: the conclusion, with the ticking clock sound over NIN-style sotto voce. Maybe it just needed another round of thinking about the concept to decide whether this guy with too much time on his hands is a rich rock star loafer ("Life's Been Good"), a pent-up horny weirdo ("Sometimes A Fantasy"), just a sad drunk going nowhere ("Captain Jack"), a nascent serial killer, or what. Personally, I wouldn't mind a plot - always tough to sell a song that's just "I'm mentally not all that together!" in different words for four minutes, unless you have Michael Jackson to sing the hook.

Definitive sideways thumb - I'm not impressed, but I wouldn't turn it off if I heard it, and I'm gonna toss it in my "corporate rock" playlist to see how it settles in.

Always thought this song was about unemployment?

Ha, I just realized that I always heard "null and void" as "unemployed"! OK, you're probably right.

I always hated what they did live after the "Is it any wonder I'm not the president?" line.

http://youtu.be/pD8mzZun5wo?t=3m16s

Tommy also changes the "I'm not a criminal" line.

I had always assumed that someone taught Tommy Shaw what the phrase "is it any wonder" actually means after the song was already at least half written.