Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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.

Also, that debut admittedly does sound recorded at the bottom of a slopbucket, which usually makes me push reject these days (and I'm not claiming you can hear the songs that well to be honest.) But it reminds me why I used to think that kind of schtick was cool, once upon a time.

I just got the re-release of the Armegeddon album with Keith Relf, Bobby Caldwell etc. A lot of the same "motifs" from Captain Beyond pop up here, which leads me to believe Caldwell was the true leader of both bands. Plus, the motherfucker was a genius drummer, just amazing. I dont know which record gets the nod from me, the CB debut or this. I think he had better players around him in Armageddon, but Captain Beyond is just so weird (in a good way). This is certainly heavier, and "Silver Tightrope" is a pretty killer ballad. Curious what you guys think.

Scott's raved about that Armageddon album on many an occasion. I think it's pretty good but a bit long-winded. (I too prefer Captain Beyond.)

The songs on Armageddon are long, but they dont bore me for some reason.

the first side is perfect, so just play that, myonga!

oh and i forgot to thank you for the cdr, myonga! thanks!

and, bill, if you want to pay tribute to bobby, by all means, add kind words to the tribute thread:

Where Is The Love For Bobby Caldwell?? No, Not THAT Bobby Caldwell! Bobby Caldwell of Captain Beyond & Keith Relf's Armageddon & Johnny Winter And & Rick Derringer Fame!!

Yeah, that thread is fantastic, kind of a "This Is Your Life" vibe.

xxpost - You're welcome, Scott; and sticking to Side One of "Armageddon" is exactly what I do!

Also, can I just say (without fake modesty) that my second remark on that Bobby Caldwell thread is possibly my alltime favourite of my own postings?

Interesting that you dont like side 2, the last song is the most "Captain Beyondish" song on it.

I am not Bobby Caldwell.

Re xhuxk's thing in the Voice, excerpted. A bit off topic but this is my territory, the demographics of which have something to do with which he speaks:

The indie domination at the top of the album list is a harder nut to crack, but a few factors seem worth pondering. For one thing, the poll's electorate has changed—freelance dollars aren't flowing like the old days, and with dailies and weeklies chopping arts positions, newsprint dinosaurs have departed the vocation, voluntarily and involuntarily, in droves. Meanwhile, way younger bloggers and Tweeters who make even less money reviewing music have stepped in. Some vote, and plenty see eye-to-eye with Pitchfork ... But when it's mainly the old farts who seem to have minds of their own, I start to wonder.

Actually, saw this coming years ago. Krugman, with reference to the economy, calls it looking for people who aren't part of the Borg collective.

I dropped out of the Poll two or three years ago, no longer keep track. Didn't look at the list this year except for your essay which was noted elsewhere and which caught my eye.

When McD presented his statistical analyses of critic non-congruence, I was always in the bottom five, reliably the total outlier. But there were others, I don't recall them all, but I'd reckon there's been a certain amount of loss for the same reasons -- their are some who are no longer interested in what it has to say. And while it was novel to be a statistical anomaly, the thrill of it's purely transient. I don't actually need a regular statistical proof that I've not been susceptible to groupthink.

It may be partly generational and age-related. But part of it is also not wishing to be part of a large stupid club to which your contribution is less than marginal.

After 2006, the Voice scrubbed itself of all the editors I'd worked with. In the space of over half a decade I'd written, at one time or another, something for every section except astrology and sex, including a cover story.

But it simply became too hard to pitch things to a different group with which I have nothing in common. We might as well be living on different planets and while that's not the case, it is part of the larger phenomenon in which stratification and people walling themselves off in their own areas of mutual interest is now the norm, one which is actually made easy to do through digitial communication/niche community. It's just the way things are so there mut be a certain percentage of people who choose not to participate or become invisible for similar reasons, not necessarily related to the Voice, but certainly related to their experience with music journalism and pop pro-rating.

I don't feel it's a duty to make an effort to break through such things anymore. If one were ostensibly running something like P&J, one would theoretically think such a person would be more interested in doing that. But with the numbers still involved, and there's never a shortage of actual digitally-conveyed input, what's the motivation to do so?

One thing I do know from being in cyberspace full-time for a couple decades is that crowds of the like-minded appreciate themselves more when they're less diverse and if you want lots of eyeballs and comments, you pitch to that if you want the best results. Pandering, but it is the most successful formula.

Anyway, while it's stupid to think that more than a couple people who read and regularly post in this thread contribute to P&J now, it's equally stupid to think that those who post here don't listen to anything new outside of hard rock reissues oldies they've dug out of their closets, f'r instance.

Note: Since this has to do with my own private Idaho, don't cut-n-paste it into the P&J discussion.

this is the first year i submitted a ballot since chuck left. my avant/noise/whatever column in decibel mag enabled me to hear all kinds of strange sounds that i dug a lot and i celebrated the best of them. and there were more where they came from. my column has totally reinvigorated me as far as writing about records goes. so, cuzza what i was listening to this year, i ended up in the bottom ten of voters. happy to be there! but not inordinately happy or anything. i wish more people heard the stuff i heard this year. a lot of it was very exciting.

I wound up down at the bottom by submitting an all-Latin ballot, a few of the albums on which probably sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Just not in America, and not to the online critical community. Not a lot of Los Tigres del Norte fans at Pitchfork, I bet.

Picked up Ten Years After's Roadwork from 2005, a double. It fell on the heels of Now which I thought was a good album sans Alvin Lee and it contains many of the songs from it performed live. They benefit from being played a lot by the time this was put out. Joe Gooch can do all Alvin Lee's parts, so the half of the thing that's classic live TYA is spotless. I'd say "I Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes" which was 14 minutes on the TYA's live one on Epic in the early 70's is still 14 minutes but is souped up by the addition of a medley that goes from the Yardbirds to Deep Purple before sequeing back into the slow jazz blues. "I'm Going Home" is crunching in all the right ways, plus "Hear Me Calling" is included.

Not quite was Foghat Live II was but in the same ballpark. Lots of yobbish soccer cheering from the crowd, so if it's not added on, there's some decent pub fighting audience for 'em in the UK still.

I recall Now, the studio album which came out the same year getting some good notice here. I still have it and crack it out now and then. It was way better than most of Alvin Lee's late stuff with TYA before they laid it to rest.

The Tubes' Mondo Birthmark was studio quality recording -- Wally Heider in SF -- before the debut album. It is, they say, all the stuff producer Al Kooper made a face at with the exceptions of earlier versions of "White Punks on Dope," "Mondo Bondage" and a couple from "Young & Rich". Now it doesn't
seem so outrageous but a spoken word thing about butt fucking set to a Capt. Beefheart disjoint must have seemed so, along with a song about Vietnam vets called "Empy Shoes." Waybill sings his shoes are empty because his legs have been blown off and his baby's left him. Could be ripe for a remake. Send it to Nashville right away.

Nice version of "Telstar" and the first version of "White Punks On Dope" rules just about as much as later versions with the slight diff of having the middle choruses singing "We're white dopes on junk/mom & day live in Hollywood/Hang myself when I get enough rope" rather than the straight title.

Lots of nifty pics and liner notes. This particularly reminds me of how some bands of people who were unreconstructed hippies gravitated to hard rock and elaborate arrangements -- some of this is arranged like the overture from Tommy, only fractured. Coincidentally, I was listening to the Pink Fairies' NeverNeverLand last night and there are similar roots, only the Tubes came from middle class Phoeniz, Arizona and were bigger snobs about being superlative on their instruments, Prairie Prince being one of the original members.