Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

'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.)

i like it. i have one of the EPs you like too. next to nothing. gonna play that today sometime.

Oh, no I remember, Get Animal was Adam Bomb. And he had a thing for putting Vern Troyer on his covers, twice. That worked well.

Just gave Earth Quake's live '75 Rocking The World a spin -- definitely has more of the soul/r&b/boogie influence that George mentioned above than 8.5 which I talked about above, and I assume Leveled too -- and yeah, maybe even some Marriot in the vocals, though Gary Phillips (who sings the cover of Marriot's Small Faces' "Tin Soldier'") only gets one lead vocal, as does Stan Miller who totally fucking kills ELO's "Ma Ma Ma Belle", basically turning it into the Slade song (look at the title) it deserved to be all along. John Doukas lead-vocals the rest, and he's got more suburban whiteboy in his singing I think; still really like what he does with the Easybeats' "Friday On My Mind." All told, only three originals out of eight tracks. (They also cover "Route 66" and Lou Reed's "Head Held High.") At first I was thinking the album was maybe a little too humorlessly purist/bar-band-boogie stodgy compared to the other Earth Quake ones I've heard (basically the impression I got about Brownsville Station's nonetheless still good also-'75 Motor City Connection the other day fwiw), but a few cuts in, it really kicked in. Apparently it was their third album; first two came out in '71 and '72 on A&M.

"Sittin' In the Middle of Madness" is probably the whitest thing they did. Hot riff and syncopation is the best part of it before the vocal, the song structure of which makes singing a bit out of reach. Anyway, I thought they were going for Aerosmith on "Sittin'" and the first time I saw the album I thought they were trying to look like 'em, too.

I had the '71 and '72 albums. "Trainride" came from them and they'd do it again for Leveled. They had a second live side recorded at Rockpalast in Germany and that appeared with a Beserkley Euro-only release with one side of Greg Kihn, one side of the Rubinoos, one side of Tyla Gang, and Earth Quake. It was in support of their Leveled tour and the band is a bit more guitar muscled and pro/less garage on it.

i really like the second album *why don't you try me*. never heard the first one. but the first one is supposedly their least rocking. trainride is on the second album. why don't you try me can usually be found cheap.

i never see the live album used. i can only imagine that three or four people total even bought it new.

so, basically, i've never heard the first album, the live album, and the last album, two years in a padded cell. and i like the 2nd album, 8.5, and leveled. that about covers it for me for now.

earth quake were on a dutch ariola records comp in 1977 called GEEF VOOR NEW WAVE. check out the track-listing:

A1 The Rubinoos - Rock and Roll is Dead
A2 The Motors - Dancing the Night Away
A3 Johnny Moped - No One
A4 Eddie and the Hot Rods - Do Anything You Wanna Do
A5 The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes
A6 Generation X - Your Generation
A7 X-Ray Spex - Oh Bondage Up Yours!
A8 Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll
B1 Jonathan Richman - Roadrunner
B2 Sex Pistols - Pretty Vacant
B3 Motörhead - Motorhead
B4 Dwight Twilley Band - I'm On Fire
B5 The Radiators From Space - Television Screen
B6 Radio Stars - Dirty Pictures
B7 Earth Quake - Trainride

that's my kinda punk comp!

i can only imagine that three or four people total even bought it new.

Then I was one of 'em.

I used to have the Radio Stars album with "Dirty Pictures" on it. Great song, can't remember much else about the rest of it except it was glammy hard rock.

Oh My God! "Sex Shop" on Shakin' Street's 2009 reunion, "21st Century Love Channel," is almost as good as "Suzie Wong," right down to the Toss the Ross the solo. About Fabienne working in a sex shop on Place Pigalle in Paris, naturally. Maybe she actually did because she puts herself into it. Gotta like her
FrancoisEnglish, though. "I sell them gadgets that you wind; I turn them on and blow their muaaau-ind!"

Oh I'm gonna have to tease ya xhuxk on 21st Century Love Channel -- you're definitely going to want to dig this one up as it is to Shakin' Street's cat what the 2008 Rose Tattoo album was to theirs.

A total surprise, starting slow and then all of a sudden the songwriting kicks at the halfway point and band runs off five really good songs in a row. Addition of organ, which the old records didn't use, gives it a happy swagger plus some Who's Next sequencer sound in places.

"Streets of San Francisco" seemingly takes back to the second Shakin' Street album. Seems to contain references to her old beau, Damon Edge.

First couple listens and I rate this about as good or as good as that record. While "Sex Shop" and "San Francisco" aren't quite as good as "Suzie Wong," there's nothing as bad as "I Want to Box You" on here.

When you start the CD the first couple bits seem average. After which out trots the good stuff and
everyone's on fire with the glory of it by the end. Not bad.

Okay, I obviously need to figure out a way to get ahold of that record. (Had no idea until yesterday that it existed, either -- And I'm somebody who actually likes "I Want To Box You"!)

Decided that, once you get past "Black Betty," the second side of the first Ram Jam album is way better than the first side, which really does come off kinda pre-fabricated, somehow. Second-best song is almost for sure the closer "Too Bad On Your Birthday," which starts like "Bang A Gong" and which Joan Jett covered a few years later. But "404" sounds like the guitarist had been listening to "Stranglehold," "High Steppin'" has some really cool prog Allmans type thing going on, and the '70s high school parking lot bubblegum boogie of "Overloaded" and "Hey Boogie Woman" are also very neat. (Also just noticed that Tuff Darts get a partial writing credit for "All For The Love Of Rock N' Roll" at the end of Side One; still don't know if they were any good.)

you definitely need the tuff darts album! it's great!

B5 The Radiators From Space - Television Screen
B6 Radio Stars - Dirty Pictures

I don't think I've ever heard either of these bands -- both on Chiswick, apparently -- or given a second of thought to them before. Now I'm curious. ("No One" by Johnny Moped is absolute godhead, though.)

love that johnny moped album. i have a radio stars 12 inch single on chiswick. it's good.

Some notes starting at the permalink below on the new Shooter Jennings, 7DayBinge, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Legendary Shack Shakers albums -- the first two of which are way more (mostly shitty) loud/hard rock than country; the latter two definitely have hard-rocking parts:

Rolling Country 2010

Houston glam-rock revival band currently getting some local press and radio attention here; the song I heard, "Five Dollar Fame", had some recognizable remnants of '70s Bowie and Tim Curry in it somewhere, but still sounded really fuzzy, half-cooked and underproduced to my ears:

http://www.myspace.com/rokymoonandbolt

Guy on the radio then said "Texas glam has happened before, though," and played a song by Alejandro Escovedo's apparent old band Buick MacKane, which song also sounded fuzzy, half-cooked, and underproduced (and also not even as good as Guns N' Roses' cover of said T. Rex song).

Best glam-rock-revival album I heard last year came from these guys, from Boston. Not sure whether I ever mentioned them. I still have their CD after more than a year, but it still seems kind of marginal somehow:

http://www.myspace.com/genedantestarlets

http://www.genedante.com/

Minnesota glam/trannie hard rock band I had a brief infatuation with in the early '00s. Don't have any of their CDs anymore, but last month I listened to a CD-R I made of a metal show I did for Village Voice web Radio in 2001, and their song "Lust" actually still sounded good to me. Not sure whether their lineup or music has deteriorated since, though:

http://www.myspace.com/atph

I was also really into these guys, from Pittsburgh. Not as glammy, but definitely hard rock, and I still have a couple CDs. Still around, apparently, though I haven't kept up with them for the past few years:

http://www.myspace.com/ashestoashesmusic

Just determined that Fastway's 1984 All Fired Up is split more or less evenly between songs that sound like Led Zeppelin had 14 or so years before (Side One, best examples: "Misunderstood," "Station," and much slower ooze blooze "Hurtin' Me") and songs that sound like Cinderella would four years later (Side Two, best examples: "Tell Me," "If You Could See".) Can't think offhand of anybody who's done Zep better, overall, since In Through The Out Door (which isn't exactly what I said in my review of Fastway's self-titled 1983 debut in Stairway, which still doesn't explain why I ranked it way down at #389 and then got rid of my copy after the book came out.) Anyway -- killer rhythm section including ex-Humble Pie Jerry Shirley on drums, Dave King's a great lemon squeezing squealer, and Fast Eddie Clarke's on guitar. How come nobody talks about these guys anymore? ("All Fired Up," the title track, is also an excellently speedy NWOBHM facsimile.) Popoff actually gave the debut a 10, though, and this followup just a 6, but I don't remember the first one being that much better (if it was, it's got to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time.)

Speaking of Zepalikes, I heard Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" over the car radio a few weeks back, and thought it totally sucked eggs. But I guess "Still Of The Night" was their great Zep rip, right? I haven't owned any of their albums for decades, though; maybe they had other ones. (Also have no recollection of whether Kingdom Come were any good.)