Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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.)

Hah, Dave King's been in the Flogging Mollys for years where he does very little lemon squealing.

Kingdom Come did the bald-faced "Kashmir" rip. I still have their second record "In Your Face." It's better than the abuse they got but not by a great deal. The main thing is the singer spent so much time sounding like Robert Plant that he can't easily not sound like Percy, so it still sounds like Zep. But it has the late-Eighties hair metal overproduction so it never really sounds like Zep when you get right down to it. It's a big blocky hard rock and metal album with the usual bits of overwraughtness and howling in the gail.

Makes sense, huh?

Actually, I don't think Plant does much lemon squealing himself these days. (Though maybe I did overstate King's squeal at least...a little.)

Thing about Whitesnake is the US audience mostly knows the band by the big production Eighties sexy video completely over the top thing. That band's utterly different from first half career Whitesnake which is Deep Purple with Glenn Hughes kicked out and Juicy Lucy guitarists all to do extended blooz rock with David Coverdale doing his almost-Percy impressions. Doesn't sound like Zep. A comfortably stodgy Brit hard rock band with lots of name value, successful in Britain, unheard of over hear until makeover. I have a live album from the Hammersmith Odeon. It's pretty much an excersize in 7 to 12 minute numbers. About five songs on it, sort of like the first live Rainbow album.

A couple years ago the old Whitesnake cranked up their career in Europe again with a couple releases as Band of Snakes. Stodgy friendly arena-ready mid-Seventies blooz rock, acceptable as live recordings if you like that stuff.

The original single version of "Here I Go Again" isn't a band at all, just famous ringers and Coverdale produced by Dan Huff before he was famous in Nashville. So Taylor Swift should probably cover it.

Gene Dante made me laugh, perhaps coincidentally. He could be that urbane guy in the new Geico
commercials who asks the rhetorical question, only he shows a stud in his tongue and wears sunglasses.

One of the songs on the page sounded straight from Seventies Brit glam, Alvin Stardust rather than
Ziggy, but decent. The horn charts in it were key. The other two had an indie minstrel cabaret thing going, but US in flavor which messes up the Euro Bowie Brian Ferry thing it seems to be aiming for.

my brother used to play this a lot when we were kids:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kkCHUk87bYc/SLviIBfOy7I/AAAAAAAAJeA/13DKaDJaZxc/s400/Whitesnake+-+Live+in+the+Heart+of+the+City+(2007).jpg

not long ago i visited my brother and he gave me his original copy of this which rules and i was very happy to hear it again:

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d40/1589.jpg

just thought of it cuz its another example of pre-mtv-big-hit-80's version of longstanding band.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Whitesnake-liveathammersmith1.jpg/200px-Whitesnake-liveathammersmith1.jpg

This is the alb I was referring to. Functionally identical to Live..Inna Heart of the City.

Thumping extended blooz rock punctuated with gails of howling. "Been mistreated!" for the fifth or sixth time on record. Cue Stormbringer next.

That Whitesnake Live...In The Heart Of The City album was reissued in 2007 as a two-CD set. Boosted it all the way up to 15 tracks.

burn and stormbringer are always gonna be my favorite coverdale moments. but i STILL need a copy of come taste the band cuz i'm a tommy bolin fan and i'd probably dig it. never even heard it!

Whitesnake Live...In The Heart Of The City

Breakaway Records in Austin had an LP copy of this on sale for $1 a couple months ago. Considered buying it, too. Maybe I should have.

Listening to it now. It's pretty good.

The update reissue may have the tracks from Live at Hammersmith. I remember the two seeming to come from the same set of performances. So I got out my old copy -- a Japanese deluxe CD with sash and booklet -- and mine has "Come On," "Might Just Take Your Life," "Lie Down," "Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City" , "Trouble," and "Mistreated."

It's very much the thumping blooz rock and party album. Mostly, it has Coverdale sounding most like Paul Rogers. "Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City" actually steals from a Free tune I can't quite put my finger on, "I'll be Creepin'," I think. There's even a Grand Funk-ish quality to some of -- "Might Just Take Your Life" and "Lie Down" with Coverdale doing the cool hard rock soul man vocal ala the kind of things Farner and Don Brewer were fond of. "Trouble" owns a lot of modern country rock, particularly
Jason Aldean. Who I'd bet had Whitesnake imports at some point.

"Mistreated" has Coverdale reverting to his Percy stylings.

It's hard not to smile at this stuff. Coverdale's likably oafish and the band is totally unflash, no Blackmore-isms from the guitarists, just the facts, ma'am.

New Disney atrocity in the fake heavy metal band show meme: Iron Weasel.

Couldn't get through more than thirty seconds of two-cased songs, one called Pull My Finger, which one might think would be OK in the hands of someone genuinely crass and not writing for kids TV. But that's not the case here.

You can whip these songs out in 3 minutes tops, I'd think, particularly if you have a library of digital heavy metal riffs and drum lines. Then all you needs is some fool to sing a little although some of that is probably also buyable in bits and pieces now, too.

And here we are bagging on "Here I Go Again" and old Kingdom Come. Sacre bleu.

One thing about David Coverdale was that he knew the value of getting good musicians in. Steve Vai, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray, Colin "Bomber" Hodgkinson (those last 2 both from a jazz fusion background), etc etc. Although I guess Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody had to go if they ever wanted to get on MTV. Adrian Vandenberg looked like the kind of guy who'd bring his own wardrobe to the band, unlike Jon Lord.

Okay, so anybody want to give me a good reason why I shouldn't get rid of my CD of L.A. sleaze-glam revival band Vains Of Jenna's 2006 Lit Up/Let Down, which has mostly been gathering dust around my abode for the past three or four years? Just tried playing it again today -- twice -- and it just really sounds generic. Guess somebody knowing that genre at all seemed refreshing in '06, but really, who cares? Do you?

Here's their myspace, if you need your memory refreshed:

http://www.myspace.com/vainsofjenna

They're managed by the guy from Tuff! Other than that, not really.

Playing The Last Vegas (from Chicago)'s 2004 sleaze-glam Lick 'Em And Leave 'Em (on Get Hip, same label as the Gore Gore Girls) now, and it sounds way better. Rawer, more ominous, kicks more ass when it decides to. The slower grinds remind me what pre-grunge Seattle bands like Green River were doing with half-remembered Aerosmith "Seasons Of Wither" riffs in the mid '80s (and the blurry hairy CD cover photo with eyes hiding behind sunglasses suggests that may be what Last Vegas had in mind), only with more mid '80s L.A. hairspray. Last Vegas got more slicked up and half-coherent on last year's Whatever Gets You Off, which came out on Nikki Sixx's label Eleven Seven and which I overrated for a few months before they were gonna tour with Crue (still think it's not bad), but the debut sounds grimier and rocks me more when it speeds up, e.g. in "One To Go" and "Hit The Bricks." Honestly figured I'd gotten rid of it; glad I found it in a box in the closet.