Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

i never listened to the albums much, but the squeeze singles album is some kinda perfect. all i ever really needed, i guess.

So, what are generally considered the most rocking tracks on Ram Jam's Portrait Of A Young Ram (which I have already played twice in 2010 I'll have you know) and Earthquake's 8.5? Hard choice, but I'm leaning toward "The Kid Next Door," "Turnpike" (holy shit is this one heavy slog), "Runaway Runaway" (holy shit this is fast) and maybe "Hurricane Ride" on the Ram Jam, and "Savin My Love" (the 7-minute stretchout), "Motivate Me" (did Kiss ever do a song that good?), "Hit The Floor" (did the Raspberries ever do a song that good?) and maybe "Finders Keepers" and/or "Don't Want To Go Back" on the Earthquake, but I'm willing to take other offers. Both total killer LPs, either way (Even if Martin Popoff only likes one of the two bands. He does say "Finders Keepers" "truly deals the slashing metal," and compares the songs that sound like Kiss and the Raspberries only better to the Dictators. Seems he likes pretty much everything on the Ram Jam. Underrates their debut, naturally, but that's almost understandable.)

Oops, Portrait Of THE ARTIST AS a Young Ram I meant, duh. (But if you're on this thread, you already knew that anyway, right?)

You pegged the stuff on the second Ram Jam album. "The Kid Next Door" is the apex of the album, the first song, right? Completely different album and band than the first record which I like a little more although it's not nearly as hard. Better hooky basic rock 'n' roll on the debut, better screaming hard rock and metal on the second.

The three Earth Quake tunes all, I thought, have a bit of a soul hard rock thing which I never heard in the Dictators. Especially "Finders Keepers." Is the shortened version of "Knock On Wood" on 8.5 on it? It might have just been on Spitballs but it's in a similar
vein.

Popovic never seemed to like anything by Earth Quake. But he hears white guys who sing 'black' as as having problems staying on key, sometimes, which is all in his mind, not on record. And that definitely gave him a problem with Earth Quake.

Oddly, he never docked Steve Marriott for having the same trait.

Did Eric Carmen sound like the guy from Earth Quake? I never would have made that comparison.
"Go All the Way" like anything on Levelled[i], or the live album, or [i]8.5? Maybe some production touches. That's it.

hey, you guys, i LIKE the raspberries, i'll have you know. though they never rocked as hard as badfinger could rock on a good day. actually, that's not true. razzleberries had good rocking moments on record. you just gotta look for them.

i need to play portrait and 8.5 again soon. haven't played them in a long time. i still have a soft spot for that first earth quake album. need to play that soon too.

album that has rocked my world the most this week:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B8EggxFk9qw/R9aFCxUmFII/AAAAAAAACOs/pQPx0zobn6Y/s320/C.K.Strong+2.jpg.jpg

played this very very loud the other night whilst working after hours at the store. there is an overdriven guitar moment on side one that actually made me - as the kids like to say - LAUGH OUT LOUD. at its beauty and audacity. at its sheer friggin' coolness! mama lion had their moments, but, really, if you own only one lynn carey album, this has got to be the one.

need to play portrait and 8.5 again

I still think Leveled and Rock the World, the first and live one on Beserkely, are the best.

I need to dig those out next. Pretty sure Leveled is actually my favorite. Also, fwiw, yeah, "Knock On Wood" is on that Spitballs sort-of-comp (which I talked about on last year's thread I think), not 8.5 And definitely think Earthquake have a certain hard powerpop edge to a couple songs, "Hit The Floor" for sure among them, though maybe there's a better reference point than the 'Berries, I dunno. Can definitely hear the soul influence in the vocals here and there, but no, he doesn't sound like Marriott (or Carmen). Suppose what makes me think Raspberries is just, uh, the super pretty melody or something.

"The Kid Next Door" is track 3 on the 2nd Ram Jam; opening cut is "Gone Wild." As for which LP I like more, it's a tossup; they're both so great, but I'd probably go with the more teen-glammy debut too if somebody held a gun to my heard. (Guess "Saturday Night" -- as in Bay City Rollers? -- is the LP #2 track that sounds most like LP #1.)

"...gun to my head..."

Playing Tommy Roe's 12 In A Row now; George was totally right about Moon Martin singing like him. Roe rocks more, though. (Before that, Little Honda by the Hondells, a Top 10 LP from 1964.)

Oops, wrong Whitburn book! "Little Honda" single (featuring Brian Wilson, Glen Campbell, Gary Usher, and some guy who went on to be in Sagitarrius) went to #9; album never got higher than #119 on the chart. "Originally a studio group assembled in Southern California by Usher," Joel Whitburn says; LP covers and tours featured other guys.

You got me digging out Earth Quake. At least half of 8.5 has a soul max r&b and -- I'd not cited this before when xhck brought it up -- some Who vibe.

Listen to "Little Cindy" -- the entire middle section is the Who. "Savin' My Love" is Brit invasion with big Peter Frampton modal guitar solos through the back end. There's also a big Rascals thing going on in the vocals. Which may make one think Dictators. "Motivate Me", though, works on an initial Townshend riff, which also heavily influenced as far as I can tell, maybe a third to a half of the Dics Manifest Destiny[i], particularly the the second side.

[I]Leveled had a lot of power pop, Paul Revere & the Raiders, soul hard rock and heavy Yardbirds/Aerosmith stuff. Pretty much encompassed the arc of their talent, eclectic, a little too spread out for what US audiences expected.

"Street Fever" and "Train Ride," for example, just kill as fast heavy rock 'n' roll guitar throwdown with shouting Brit invasion r&b combo vocals.

They did do a lot of work as a covers band, after all.

"Lovin' Cup" is their best song. Riveted me when I first heard it much like Starz' "Cherry Baby." A fair and great combination of radio axe-y hard rock and and radio ready pop.

Roe rocks more, though. (Before that, Little Honda by the Hondells, a Top 10 LP from 1964.)

My brother was a serious Tommy Roe 10-12 year old boy groupie, a big part of his audience. I heard this stuff every other day for a period of a 9 months to a year out of his bedroom.

so, i told m. popoff and don waller from the imperial dogs that they should post on this thread cuz its there kinda thing, but who knows, they might just stay dirty lurkers. figured it might be their kinda thing.

digging a record by boffalongo on united artists today. need to listen more. i'll report back.

Popoff interviewed me for a half hour yesterday morning over the phone for some show VH-1 is putting together about the history of metal (hair-metal episode specifically, apparently)! Not sure whether they're gonna send a camera to Austin or not.

And speaking of Moon Martin (well, I mentioned him a few posts up), I'm sure everybody is getting sick of me talking about him on these hard rock threads when he's not, uh, really hard rock enough, but I decided that the first side of that Southwind LP What A Place To Land is actually a bit too mellow and Deadheady for me to love it. Second side ("Dynamite" and "Buzz Me" and "Bootleg Woman" which Moon later redid) gets a little more boogiefied, but not all that much more boogiefied, and I definitely prefer the guy slicked up a few years later as a rockabilly new waver than as a rustic hippie, band or no.

And speaking of rockabilly new wave, Keith Sykes's I'm Not Strange I'm Just Like You turns out to be a surprisingly fun surrogate Dave Edmunds LP from 1980, especially in "928" (which may or may not concern the time a train is leaving) and "Makin' It Before We Get Married" (the latter of which could easily pass for a Nick Lowe composition from that era.) Don't think I've ever heard another Sykes album, though. (Like that album marginally more than Billy Swan's likewise rockabillified Rock N Roll Moon from 1975, though his mature vision of the genre is charming in its own way, plus Swan covers "Ubangi Stomp," very much an anomaly both for its less mature energy and barely subverted racism. And by now, this probably belongs on the country thread, so never mind.)

Er, the part of that one song that seems like a "Nick Lowe composition" to me is the words (about a couple -- whose astrological signs are named, even -- having sex a lot before being wed), and maybe the melody. But the album's sound, at least in its more raucous half (that song included) is way more towards the Edmunds side, guitars on down.

This blog post below says that Sykes (who has apparently written songs for Jimmy Buffett and Rosanne Cash, judging from Google) is one of the few onetime Saturday Night Live musical guests who does not have his own Wikipedia page. (I know basically nothing about him myself; just paid $1 for that LP because it looked, uh, so new wave rockabilly.)

http://onepoorcorrespondent.blogspot.com/2008/04/who-in-world-is-richard-baskin.html

Popoff interviewed me for a half hour yesterday morning over the phone for some show VH-1 is putting together about the history of metal (hair-metal episode specifically, apparently)!

They'll have plenty of stock footage from the special on the same subject two years ago. Will they again waste their time trying to get Mike Saunders to cooperate?

what the hell is mike listening to these days anyway. is he still on the disney pop train to tomorrowland?

No, now it's stream-of-consciousness e-mail on Lady Gaga. And Deep Purple video on YouTube. Or stuff about the kids who volunteer to run the merch table at Samoans shows and the debilitating (my assessment, I've seen a few) multi- mall and high school football jock punk/hardcore bands on the bills in places like Santa Cruz.

Ah, 'Horns fans are all over my side of town today, so I gotta start getting ready for a Apt du Smith
college football party. Did you know Jordan Shipley has threatened to be a country music singer/songwriter if the pros don't pan out? It worked spectacularly for Mike Reid.

he makes me dizzy. in a good way, i think. speaking of which, i wonder how don's doing. he hasn't posted on ilm in a long time i don't think. hope he's okay. don a. that is.

'Horns fans are all over my side of town today

Ha ha, they were out in droves here today too, needless to say -- shopping for burnt orange tailgate food all through the grocery store, even though they'll have to get pretty sloshed to be tailgating on a 20 degree temperature / 5 degree windchill night in Austin (coldest night in two years, or something like that.) Then it's going down to 16 on Friday -- hey, I thought I left to the north to get away from that.

Don posted his Nashville Scene ballot on Rolling Country a few weeks ago. Haven't seen him much in these parts otherwise lately.

Burned John Parr's solo from 1985 back-to-back with the Nig-Heist's Snort My Load from 1984.

An interestingly schizo but slightly congruent set of values, John Parr being after the same thing as Mugger but more elegantly and tunefully, if less bone-jarring.

"Naughty Naughty" going well with "Hot Muff," "Woman Drivah," and "Balls of Fire." The Nig-Heist 'tunes,' the few better among them anyway are probably aided guitarwise by an uncredited Greg Ginn. His style is unmistakable although it's not on all of them by any means.

"St. Elmo's Fire" -- about a guy in a wheelchair -- coulda been just the material for a Nig-Heist like treatment. Although I still like it fine the way it is.

Most of John Parr is acceptable Foreigner/Nightranger-type stuff. Very glittery 80's movie as you
recall, right there with the same from Heart during the period.

Paradoxically, I saw both bands -- Parr opening for Heart at Lehigh and Nig-Heist for Black Flag in Philly. I can recall Parr doing "Naughty Naughty" and "St. Elmo's Fire," nothing about the Nig-Heist except Mugger shouting and wearing a wig. It probably sounded better maybe if you were in the front row and I wasn't.

For some reason, at the time, I always heard "Naughty Naughty" as a rip of Billy Squier's "The Stroke" (a/k/a also more or less the same funk-metal category as "Dragon Attack" by Queen.) Though I guess Foreigner's "Urgent" would be in a similar ballpark. Never liked "St. Elmo's Fire" back then, but now you've piqued my curiosity a little.

Oh come now. "St. Elmo's Fire" epitomized everything jolly and happy about the mid-Eighties back when you still thought everything was still going to work out all right. Listen to it through a gentle drunken haze and you'll be fine. Parr's solo album is the very essence of happy mid-Eighties AOR. He must have made a good fortune on the publishing for those two songs.

Parr's best known movie tie-in was definitely the St. Elmo's Fire theme, but I'll always remember "Naughty Naughty" for its use in the excellent vampire movie Near Dark. It soundtracks the movie's centerpiece, a scene where a gang of road-warrior vampires (they travel the Southwest in a camper with the windows blacked out) slaughter everyone in a crappy little redneck bar.

Got the new Airbourne disc in the mail today. Only played the first two songs so far, but I liked 'em a lot better than I remember liking the debut. The press release claims they slept in the studio during the recording sessions, 'cause that's the way Brooooooce did it back in the '70s.

I didn't recall that but Near Dark I do. It was a great movie. Adrian Pasdar vs. Lance
Henricksen and his crew.

are you guys down with the backstreet girls? i've never heard them, but this album cover kinda makes me want to.

https://www.bootlegbooze.com/shop/images/BsgBoogieSvart.jpg

backstreet girls have a lot of albums. including Hellway To High and Sick My Duck!

i still really need to listen to american dog too. i'm always afraid that they won't live up to their album covers.

http://www.badreputation.fr/images/albums/american_dog_-_scars_n_bars.jpg

so this guy has a huge list up of all the hard rock/aor/metal he owns, and he has tons of recent hard rock i've never heard on it. i'm gonna investigate some of the bands:

http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_view?list_id=73740&show=100&start=0

for instance, 2009 album by the band '77. any good? it's called 21st century rock.

http://hardrockhideout.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/7721stcenturyrock.jpg

01 Gimme Rock 'n' Roll
02 Hard Working Liar
03 Big Smoker Pig
04 Shake It Up
05 Wicked Girl
06 Your Game's Over
07 Less Talk (Let's Rock)
08 Let The Children Hear Rock 'n' Roll
09 Double-Tongued Woman
10 21st Century Rock

i wanna hear this airborne album too:

http://image.space.rakuten.co.jp/lg01/00/0000534900/90/imgc1d7715azik6zj.jpeg

1 Stand Up for Rock 'n' Roll 4:01
2 Runnin' Wild 3:38
3 Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast 3:42
4 Diamond in the Rough 2:53
5 Fat City 3:26
6 Blackjack 2:42
7 What's Eatin' You 3:36
8 Girls in Black 3:15
9 Cheap Wine & Cheaper Women 3:10
10 Heartbreaker 3:56
11 Let's Ride 3:28

http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album_American-Dog-If-You-Want-BudYouve-Got-It.jpg

i love the fact that serious hardcore hard rock/aor fans own EVERY russ ballard album. that is commitment.

underground aor fans are the only people who still buy pat benatar albums.

go ahead, google this band, i dare you:

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/big_cock/big_cock/

track-list for the big cock album:

Second Coming 0:21
2 Fucked Up 2:53
3 Real Man 3:12
4 Ride on Me 2:53
5 Rock Hard 2:45
6 She's a Lady 2:53
7 So Easy Bein' Me 3:07
8 Every Inch of My Love 2:40
9 Dirty Girl 2:56
10 Scottsdale Girls 2:31
11 Get Me Up 2:37
12 Take Me 2:33

What I could stand to hear from Big Cock was pretty submediocre despite the great fools-hall-of-fame name and audacious cover. Chigger Red was an average soCal bar band popular about a decade ago.

We used to like Crash Kelly around these parts but sadly the enthusiasm did not catch on.

I have Dirty Rig's Rock Did It laying around somewhere and liked it some, surprising since Mr. Warrior Soul has always given me a rash.

Doomfox got love on this thread a couple years ago. Typical Australian bar-fighters.

The Kevin Dubrow solo album was a great selection of glam rock covers. I think he even put a well done Budgie number on it.

The Flairs Shut Up and Drive was consistantly fair to good as pop punk metal.

Foghat Live II is actually great. And then band -- since half of Foghat 1.0 is dead, should probably be called Foghat 2.0.

Fozzy was Stuck Mojo fronted by wrestler Chris Jericho and terrible. Wasn't it started as a joke band with some manner of Spinal Tap-ish false history?

Funny Money's Stick It was great, call it Kix 2.0

Couldn't stand Get Animal. Wasn't that some celebrity rocker group?

Girlschool has consistantly been given love here for their more recent records.

Great White's Tribute to Led Zeppelin was decent and had the advantage of not making you feel you were a leering old cod if you listened to Zepparella or Lez Zeppelin CDs.

I used to see the Hangman in Hollywood a lot. They made fairly monotonous hard rock records with an I'm a loneseome ex-junkie rocker cowboy vibe. However each one always contained one or two keepers. Much more entertaining in 45 minute live sets.

Hot Leg is a successor band to The Darkness and everyone seems to have ignored it.

I have an Iced Earth box set with their first four albums included and like most of it.

Michael Katon has been making Brownsville Station/George Thurrygood-like albums forever. Every one as good as any other.

Aynsley Lister is a Brit guitar hero I mentioned briefly late last year. Does blues rock with a lot of modern US country rock style thrown in, that is I liked him a lot better than Jason Aldean.

Paperback Freud is a great fools-hall-of-fame-name.

Every Axel Rudi Pell record ever made has moments of greatness and even greater cover art.

Why would you call yourself Powerage? It's like putting a kick-me sign on your butt.

There's a new Shakin' Street album, Love Channel?

Shitbone Loves Your Wife is a great thing to say. Any album would almost have to be a letdown.

Silvertide's Show and Tell was sure great sounding but Philly appears to have swallowed them up after they were the house band in the Lady in the Water movie.

Steve Stevens Memory Crash got an honorable mention here.

Xtian band from San Diego, Thieves & Liars, made a good album mention well late on last year's thread.

Pete Wells, Angry Anderson & the Damn Fine band is Rose Tattoo doing classic rock covers, which you like when you hear it the first time.

jeez louise that guy owns 17 gary moore records. that is a whole lot of gary moore.

11 night ranger albums is likewise taking things to extremes.

and yet owning 13 saxon albums seems fine to me.

had no idea that there was a new shakin' street album either. although nothing surprises me in reunion world.

What I wrote about Funny Money a couple years ago:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/10/funny-money-kix-starts-your-heart.html

First Airbourne album (which wasn't that good tbh) + Rich and Famous:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/03/airbourne-and-the-rich-famous-do-dirty-deeds-dirt-cheap.html

On Crash Kelly (in Harp):

CRASH KELLY Electric Satisfaction (Liquor & Poker) On their debut last year, these riff-and-tune-happy Canadians gave a Cheap Trick song Gary Glitter beats, cribbed from Aerosmith’s “Same Old Song and Dance,” and louie-louied a “Since You Been Gone” (formerly Rainbow’s and Head East’s) that gave Kelly Clarkson a run for her money. This year they exhume Alice Cooper’s necrophilia classic “Cold Ethyl” after powerpopping a couple cracked-actress glam originals, and I had to google to make sure those weren’t covers, too: “She Put the Shock (in My Rock and Roll),” which talks about ’74 and ’75 and which could’ve been done first by Mott the Hoople or Slade but wasn’t, and “33 on the Charts,” sort of like if Bowie rewrote Pete Wingfield’s “Eighteen With a Bullet” except it’s about riding a superstar’s coattails onto the cover of NME. (Math-rock alert: “Count On Me, Count On You”)

George on Crash Kelly and other current glam-rock bands:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-07-26/music/wham-bam-thank-you-glam/

Me on the most recent Night Ranger album (in Blurt):

NIGHT RANGER Hole In The Sun (VH1 Classic)
Yeah, that Night Ranger. Not only are Jack Blades and Co. still around; they recently even entertained the troops at Guantanamo. Their late ‘90s Seven and Neverland are smarter and more muscular melodic rock albums than you’d ever suspect, and so is this one; in fact, give or take the inspirational-piano blandout “There is Life,” the most ignorable track here may well be the “bonus” acoustic retooling of their eternal Boogie Nights Nerf-metal prototype “Sister Christian.” They have more luck with a lovely unplugged-Zep-style update of 1983’s “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” but the real keepers are new music: Power-funk metal with pompy chord progressions in “Tell Your Vision”; Marilyn Manson horror beats under Judas Priest overdrive and clearer singing than either in “You’re Gonna Hear From Me”; Everclear verses surrounding a sterling ‘80s hard-pop chorus in “Whatever Happened”; Electric Six-as-Robert Palmer machismo in “Drama Queen.” They even do a “Rockstar” song – take that, Nickelback!

On Axel Rudi Pell's last album (scroll down -- also an exactly one-year-old comment from George about Panzerballet's name that I never noticed until just this second):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2009/01/panzerballet-panzerballet-bad-land-this.html

i'm actually listening to Died Pretty right now (free dirt album). i didn't think i knew their stuff at all, but the first song i'm hearing "blue sky day" i totally remember from college radio. singer sounds like the flesheaters guy and a little like chris bailey and a little like the guy from straightjacket fits. and the music is definitely (latter day)saints. i actually like this a little! doesn't really belong here though. belongs on that bodeans/cruzados/green on red thread probably. are thin white rope fans the only people who still listen to old died pretty albums?

Nah, mainly just aging Australians. I actually kinda liked that Free Dirt reissue a couple years ago, though; also last month I pulled out my copy of the Caressing Swine (...And Some History) CD that Columbia put out in the U.S. in 1994 (and I apparently bought at Repo Records in Philly for $2.99 a few years later), and liked it more than I thought I would. But sure, they could have rocked harder; no question. I posted a little about them somewhere on this thread:

Died Pretty C/D S/D

i was probably still listening to hunters & collectors when free dirt came out.

George on American Dog and other early '00s biker rockers:

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

I actually reviewed Free Dirt for Creem Metal when it came out! (I still have the hard copy, but it's nowhere on the web.)

What's the format we're using again in submission of Myonga's Bob Seger reissue?

I went with this:

Bob Seger – Never Mind the Bullets Here's Early Bob Seger (Myonga CD-R)

Noticed somebody on line calling the label "MVB Records" instead, but I'm sure they'll sort all that out at P&J headquarters.

have so much to listen to. i'll get to it all somehow. just got these gems and i'm gonna take my time with them:

ronnie paisley's band - smoking mirror (pye - 1978) (this is great!)

yesterday and today - s/t london - 1976) (excited to find a clean copy of this!)

british lions - s/t (vertigo - 1978)

pez band - two old two soon - live at dingwalls! (passport - 1978)

meal ticket - take away (logo - 1978)

esperanto - danse macabre (A&M - 1974)

charlie and the wide boys - great country rockers (anchor - 1976)

the bogey boys - jimmy did it! (chrysalis - 1980)

cozy powell - over the top (ariola - 1979)

tyla gang - moonproof (beserkley - 1978)

sean tyla's just popped out (polydor/zilch - 1980)

keith christmas - fable of the wings (polydor)

YAMASH'TA - come to the edge (island - 1972) (had this years ago and got rid of it. give it another try.)

nite city - s/t (20th century - 1977) (ray manzarek and nigel harrison. i'll give it a shot.)

russ ballard - s/t (cbs - 1974) (never heard this. song titles look very promising.)

mike harrison - s/t (island)

manfred mann - chapter three (polydor - 1970?) (finally digging into the vast 70's manfred mann stuff. lots of good jams. this stuff was recorded in 1969 though.)

ellis - why not? (epic - 1973)

ellis - riding on the crest of a slump (epic - 1972)

johnny winter - still alive and well (columbia - 1973)

the bishops - live (chiswick - 1978) (woo hoo! needed this so bad!)

um, tons of UFO albums.

stray dog - s/t (manticore - 1973) (needed this too!)

british lions - trouble with women (cherry red - 1980)

zones - under influence (arista - 1979)

trash - s/t (flarenasch - 1981)

omega - live at the kisstadion (bellaphon - 1979)

mother's ruin - road to ruin (spectra - 1982)

delta rebels - down in the dirt (polydor - 1989)

johnny winter - saints & sinners (columbia - 1974) (basically want nice copies of every JW album from the 70's.)

trapeze - hot wire (warner bros - 1974) (hey we were just talking about them, no?)

also got that double live beserkely record. german thing. tyla gang. earthquake. kihn.

>>pez band - two old two soon - live at dingwalls! (passport - 1978)

Pretty much shows how much the guitarist liked Jeff Beck/the Yardbirds.

>>tyla gang - moonproof (beserkley - 1978)

Big drop off after the debut, Yachtless.

>>johnny winter - still alive and well (columbia - 1973)

A bit better than Saints & Sinners. The live records are still the best. Maybe the first two, also.

>>stray dog - s/t (manticore - 1973) (needed this too!)

This was great. Shocking how Snuffy went into television theme music. He probably made a mint for 30something themes.

>>trapeze - hot wire (warner bros - 1974) (hey we were just talking about them, no?)

Yep. This is a pretty funky and electric record. But after it's over the tunes are hard to remember.

>>also got that double live beserkely record. german thing. tyla gang. earthquake. kihn.

Think I may have said this in one of these threads. Half good, half bad. Kihn and the Rubinoos are the half bad. Tyla Gang and Earth Quake, the half good. Earth Quake doing an Aerosmith imitation. Tyla Gang great for "Styrofoam" alone, one the early Stiff singles, I think.

Here we go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny15av4VU3c

Highway Patrol as police car theme

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/12/20/highway-patrol-revisited/

delta rebels album is pretty good! never even heard of them. biker/southern/hard rock band. group shot with a harley on the back cover. some good group shout choruses. nice guitar action.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qCK-Qw6Pr7Y/TNiy1GDzwjI/AAAAAAAAFyw/sRtQ7dUdWmw/s1600/Delta%2BRebels%2B%25E2%2580%2593%2BDown%2BIn%2BThe%2BDirt.jpg

So, Private Lines Trouble In School album from 1980 turns out to not quite smoke in the boys' room as much as its title made me hope for, but it's still good catchy tricky very slightly new wavey hard pomp pop rock along the lines of, say, Shooting Star or Streetheart or Prism from the same time period. Loudest guitars probably "How Long"; stickiest hooks title cut and "Young and Sexy." ("A keyboard-dominated pop-rock band with brutal guitaring--and one album to date," Jasper and Oliver called them in their book.)

Anyway, here's a question; has to do with something Spin assigned me. What, if any, great hard rock albums would you say qualify as "wall of sound," production-wise? Like, in the Phil Spector sense. Things louder than, say, Born To Run or Bat Out Of Hell, I mean. Any?? (Was thinking maybe the first two Boston LPs, or Hysteria; what am I blanking out on? In my head I want something like Dream Police to qualify -- Cheap Trick definitely had beefed-up ELO moments -- but that might stretch things.) (The Move, maybe? I don't know. I feel like there's some obvious examples that just haven't occurred to me yet.)

Or the Who (early '70s), maybe? Have any hard rock bands or producers ever claimed to be influenced by Spector (or George Martin, or Brian Wilson)? (The Ramones had an album produced by Spector, of course, but I'm not sure that counts.) This really isn't something I usually care about, which probably means I'm not a big wall of sound fan myself. (I mean, it's possible you could say most heavy metal works as a "wall of sound" in a sense, but I doubt that will cut it.) (Oh wait, I guess there's Queen, right?)

yeah, queen. boston. aerosmith too depending on the album.

In terms of Cheap Trick maybe the George Martin-produced thing. Actually, "The World's Greatest Lover" is probably closest they got to wall-of-sound early and that's a ballad. The first Boston album, yeah, I'd agree with that although wall-of-sound doesn't equate as "loud" to me. More like smothering, or all filled up. Haven't listend to the second one in years and years so I dunno there.

Maybe a Ramones album or two. However, not the one produced by Spector. More likely Pleasant Dreams, the Gouldman-produced one.

Nothing in the Move's catalog. Technology hadn't caught up with what they were doing.

Keith Olsen produced records in thr Eighties, might include something by Heart and one by .38
Special.

Wall of sound for Spector meant cramming everything into a mono mix to overcome the limitations of
transistor radios and cheap phonographs. Not precisely the same once ornate stereo mixes became common.

You should probably dig through your late Eighties hair metal records after hard limiting was really
entrenched because I recall all those records, no matter what was on them, as delivered to come blasting out of the speakers.

ZZ Top's Rhythmeen and Mescalero, particularly the former, are walls of sound. Rhythmeen virtually
falls over on top of you, just like a wall, at times.

Foghat's Fool for the City is monolithic in that way, too.

The debut by Cactus is a wall of something.

Yes's Tales from the Topographic Chinch Bug and Relayer.

The Godz debut, courtesy of Don Brewer's wall of guitar and drums production.

Lou Reed's Rock n Roll Animal with Wagner and Hunter and guitars. It's allegedly a live album but Al Kooper did some odd things with the guitar tracks in the studio to make it overwhelming.

Not all these are real good records.

You could probably fish one or two or even three from Roy Thomas Baker-produced Queen. The first album, at least.

Ha ha, I think lots of those are "walls of something." But that list definitely helps a lot; thanks George (and Scott)!

Just got offered an interview with Ritchie Blackmore, pegged to a new Blackmore's Night album coming out in January. I told the publicist I'd do it if and only if he was willing to talk about his older bands (which he's gotten testy about doing in the past); I'm willing to indulge him with a few questions about his and his wife's puffy-sleeves folk thing, but if he thinks I'm not gonna ask Rainbow questions less than a year out from Dio's death, he's fuckin' nuts.

yeah, 80's stuff in general was all about that bombastic mix. just get an eddie money record. he even stole phil's girl!

for the wall of sound thing, maybe Mott's Brain Capers for the solid echoey mass, or for the big over-ornateness, Kiss Destroyer or Use Your Illusion.

definitely Dream Police and The Move's Looking On (their heaviest IMO). also Mott's album "The Hoople" - really thick soupy sound.

speaking of which, i recently got beautiful U.K. pressings of Ian's S/T album and Overnight Angels and they are both pretty massive sound-wise. Overnight Angels got the Roy Thomas Baker treatment.

bought lotsa 50-cent past expiry hard rock vinyl today

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

>>The Kids "Anvil Chorus"

aka The Heavy Metal Kids. It's their second album. Not quite as good as the first but still way better than average. Singer Gary Holton wound up on a very popular Brit TV show as one of a crew of migrant bricklayers and construction workers, then died just as he was getting famous, of a drug overdose. Was definitely mining the street glam rock thing and I recall posting a couple YouTube vids of them on some German music show.

The television series produced a good crew of Brit actors you now see in American productions -- Tim Spall, Bill Nighy, for example -- so if he hadn't up and died he might now be famous, too.

Listened to The [New] Runaways "Fast and Loud", a Kim Fowley production effort to revive the band with new personnel sometime in the late Eighties, I think. I never actually saw a copy when it was released, so it might have been enjoined in stores but has now been reissued because of someone's desire to ride along on the minor success of The Runaways revival.

It was a band of laughably lousy ringers, doing songs with embarrassingly sub-moron lyrics like on the first two Runaways albums. But with absurdly tacky, sometimes hilariously inappropriate production and two singers of much less talent than Cherie Curie and Joan Jett. The only thing that came to mind when I was listening was Daphne & Celeste fronting a band of mates trying to do late Eighties Alice Cooper mixed with teen angst torch songs about wanting to be with the bad boys, or the guy/graffiti artist with "boots of fire" -- no joke. Seriously, boots of fire. And they do a song called S-P-E-E-D-M-E-T-A-L which is more like speedy Cramps novelty material.

Actually, the record is so bad I'm having a great time making jokes at its expense. Perversely, xhuxk might actually like parts of it because it has those qualities that led him to put those entries in Stairway to Hell that intensely irritated purists. Kind of an accidental whoopie cushion of a record which I will probably listen to, at most, only one or two times again in my entire life. Two might really be stretching it. Once again, maybe.

And I actually saw a copy in BestBuy where it was listed with The Runaways, with the same name on the label, waiting to trick some unwitting person who doesn't smell the rat.