Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

The Joan Jett wikipedia page says 9-22-58, a month or so after mine. (Madonna anticipates me by 10 days; Michael Jackson trails me by three.) Anyway, I do remember hearing Cherry Bomb on the radio then, but it didn't get heavy play. I guess that would have been WPLJ or more likely WNEW. Saw them as a late teen, in their post-Cherie days, wedged between Suicide & the Ramones. I probably knew about them more from their press than their radio play. Hmm, now I wonder who was in that Joan-led version of the band.

Hmmm.. I didn't check Wiki; Joel Whitburn has 9-22-60 in Philadelphia. But maybe she's older than she used to be!

Did "Cherry Bomb" actually get any rock radio play at the time?

I think Cherry Bomb might have actually had more play a few years later when JJ re-recorded it for Glorious Results of... album.

Late period Runaways was probably Joan Jett, Sandy West, Lita Ford and rotating bass players, either Vickie Blue or Laurie McAllister, not that it mattered much.

There was an old poster that hung in one of the record stores in Pasadena, maybe from the Roxy, advertising a bill of the Runaways and Van Halen. Probably dated from around '78.

Post Runaways no one had an easy time of it. Cherie Currie made two albums, one of which was with her twin sister. There's some awful cheesy video from that time on YouTube. Her backing band for the album was Toto before it was Toto I think. The second one might be more listenable than the first.

Lita Ford's first hard rock solo album had Neal Merryweather in the band, if my memories still good on it. Or maybe he just produced it.

Joan Jett floundered for awhile, no label would take a chance on her. She'd recorded an album with a rolling cast that would become Bad Reputation and she and her producer eventually put it out themselves. And it still wasn't particularly popular although a lot of the songs on it are now so.

It was the second album, I Love Rock 'n' Roll that changed everything.

I"m going to correct that about Bad Reputation being not so popular. Now it occurs to me that it was toured heavy and that it eventually took hold in surprising numbers, setting the stage for the second.

Was actually thinking you were right in the first place, George, but it turns out that Bad Reputation got up to #51 in Billboard -- not near the second LP's #2 (with #1 and #7 singles), but not bad. Thing is, I'm wondering when the debut peaked since, according to Whitburn, its single "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" didn't chart until July '82, after the two I Love Rock N Roll hits had already charted. Supppsedly Bad Reputation debuted on the LP chart in March '81, nine months before the followup, and stayed on the chart for 21 weeks, but I'm wondering whether it may have fallen off, and then re-entered with its single. Wasn't it actually re-released at one point, first out on Blackheart Records and then later on Boardwalk?

Anyway. How come I never noticed before that Eddie And The Hot Rods covered Crack The Sky's "We Want Mine" on Fish 'N' Chips from 1980 before? Real good version, too; maybe the best track on the album. Best (also most Who-like) original is "This Is Today," where they say don't worry about all those young blokes fighting out on the street, they're just having some fun and all, and don't you remember when we used to do that too when we were their age? Which is interesting because it's done from the point of view of somebody older (not to mention possibly apologizing for skinheads beating up Pakistanis, this being 1980 in England and all), but that's the way it goes. Also get the idea that the sort-of-spoken Cockney-accent "Fish N Chips Pts 1 and 2" at LP's beginning and end might be another bid for the oi! boys (unless oi! boys didn't happen until '81 -- don't have a history book handy); wasn't aware fish and chips are a U.K. Friday specialty til now. (Thought that only happened with pre-Vatican II Catholics, and with us it was fish sticks.) "Call It Quits" is another good original rocker, and they cover the Rascals' "You Better Run" (also done by Pat Benatar the same year) and Outsiders' "Time Won't Let Me" well. Al Kooper produces and plays "additional keyboards and guitars."

Also discovered that "Dance Republic" on Joe "King" Carrasco & the Crowns' 1983 Party Weekend LP has basically the same rhythm as Ace Frehley's "New York Groove" (and Bohnannon's "Disco Stomp" - see Stairway disco-metal appendix), which makes me wonder whether the beat might've first come from Mexico. Album also contains enjoyably blatant rips of the Ramones, McCoys, Chuck Berry, ? and the Mysterians, and according to my wife, possibly "Summer Nights" from Grease.

Supppsedly Bad Reputation debuted on the LP chart in March '81, nine months before the followup, and stayed on the chart for 21 weeks, but I'm wondering whether it may have fallen off, and then re-entered with its single. Wasn't it actually re-released at one point, first out on Blackheart Records and then later on Boardwalk?

Yeah, it was re-released. I think this one was a surprising example of word-of-mouth and a buzz combined with touring taking hold. Plus it probably benefited from being the first actually good album from a former member of the Runaways. Lita Ford might have been out of the gate first, I don't recall the years of her first two metal albums, but the first one wasn't any good at all and the second, while an improvement, was a hard rock/HM album with no really catchy tunes.

Btw, not trying to imply that Eddie + Hot Rods actually say anything specific about skinheads or Paki-bashing (or that all skinheads were Paki-bashers, either -- most of them were more likely just drunken football holligans); for all I know, they'd written that song a few years before, and it was just about the original punk rockers, who come to think of it these guys may have felt like big brothers to in the first place. Just imagining what it might have meant amid the turmoil of 1980 U.K. (which I don't know as much about as I might pretend to, actually.) Also don't want to imply that album's as good as their first couple (Teenage Depression, which I still have, and Life On The Line, which I don't anymore for some reason. Have never heard 1979's Thriller (!!??); wasn't even aware of it 'til yesterday.

Also didn't want to imply that that Carrasco album I mentioned was particularly "hard rock"; that band can rock'n'roll, in the '50s Texas border sense obviously, but it's not like their guitars ever get very loud. Just wanted to mention it here because of the "New York Groove" connection. And I'm also pretty sure Carrasco's first two albums were better -- the self-titled Crowns one from 1980 definitely, and the one with El Molino from 1978 inasmuch as a I remember it. Think I'd take Party Weekend over '82's slicker and not-Tex-Mex enough Synapse Gap, which had Michael Jackson on it, though. But this is way off topic by now, so I'll shut up. (Curious whether anybody ever really has worked those kind of Tex-Mexy rhythms into a hard rock context, though. Maybe some Mexican bands I included in Stairway's second edition come close, but Carrasco's band had more bounce than most of those.)

No border rhythms I can detect on Cruzados' After Dark from 1987, their second album, which I bought for 50 cents a few weeks ago. Which seems a little odd to me, given their L.A. Chicano pedigree and the fact that, as the Plugz, they (most of them anyway) had covered "La Bamba" a few years before, which is to say a few years before Los Lobos. (I also call the Plugz' cuts on the Repo Man soundtrack a "hokey barrio move" in Stairway, but I don't have that LP around here anymore to figure out what I meant by that.) Anyway, Cruzados' LP is just straight-down-the-line no-personality post-Springsteen commercial lower-middle-class-struggle medium-hard rock, more or less the same density as what Bryan Adams or Bon Jovi were doing at the time, just without tunes as good. After listening to that Red Rockers LP with "China" on it last year, I'm getting the idea this was a route the industry hoped might work for seasoned hardcore bands; not sure it did work for any, though. Pretty sure I've read that "Bed Of Lies" was the Cruzados' rock radio track at the time, but it didn't chart Hot 100 (they never did -- LPs peaked at #76 and #106), and like "China" I sure never heard it on the radio myself. Album's not too bad, though -- "Last Ride" probably kicks hardest, "Young And On Fire" an okay generic hot child in the city number, "Small Town Love" okay generic fake Mellencamp I guess, "Summer's Come, Summer's Gone" bittersweet and hopeful. Truth is, probably even John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown (who actually had a song called "Tex Mex - Crystal Blue"!) had more captivating songwriting. Song credits here mostly go to band members, but producers are definitely familiar L.A. studio Mafia names (Waddy Wachtel, Billy Steinberg, etc.) Whitburn book says that Marshall Rohner, the guitar player, went on to play in T.S.O.L. in 1989.

Actually hearing more Mexican pop music mixed into Chris Perez Band's Resurrection, a pretty decent Chris Lord-Alge-mixed bilingual commercial 1999 hard rock album on Hollywood Records from a trio led by Selena's widower. But the rhythms are too up-to-date to be "Tex-Mex"; more tejano, I guess, plus corazone ballads. (Phil, who keeps up with Latin music way more than I have for the past decade and a half, could probably talk more coherently about specifics.) Anyway, the guitarist works in Who powerchords sometimes, and they cover Love's "Alone Again Or" in both English and Spanish, and the rock sound in general sounds up-to-date without being at all grunge. 15 songs (high-CD-era length) is too many, but I've let it play through twice this week painlessly. Good melodies and singing throughout. Guessing there might also be late '90s/'00s Christian rock albums this good, but I don't know what.

I remember hearing a single from that Chris Perez disc but I have no memory now of what it sounded like. My best guess, based on his contributions to Selena's work, is that it was probably an ultra-conventional power ballad (his guitar solos on her tracks, when they got in there at all, were always really incongruous, like when one would get pasted into the middle of a Whitney Houston song or something).

Re Joan Jett, after "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" took off, a video for "Do You Wanna Touch Me" (another cover, btw - it's a Gary Glitter song) was shot, featuring Joan in a bikini in an attempt to de-snarling-punk-rock-dyke her image and it kinda worked. I remember seeing it on MTV a bunch in the early to mid 80s.

I've been trying to track down Cruzados stuff on download blogs off and on for a while, but neither of their albums seem to turn up. After reading your description, I'm no longer much interested, despite the fact that I think the Plugz' Electrify Me is the greatest punk album to ever come out of L.A., and that they should be worshipped like gods in the Latin rock community but really aren't - I'd kinda posit Tito Larriva as the Latin equivalent to Scott "Wino" Weinrich: a total lifer with a devoted cult but who's never managed to break through, despite occasional nods from major labels.

On a more current topic, is anybody making more entertaining hard rock/ metal videos than White Wizzard these days? I doubt it. Their new one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfnIBnz2_zw

OK, dredged up the Cruzados' debut, tried to listen, but couldn't make it past the huge '80s drums.

Phil, to what extent did the Plugz draw on Mexican-American music? At all? (Not saying they should or shouldn't have; just curious about it.)

Found the Pontiac Brothers' Johnson for $1 last month -- what passed for a college-radio hard rock band in 1988, on rootsy college-rock label Frontier. Definitely more Stones-boogie to them than to the Replacements (especially in opener and by far best cut "Ain't What I Call Home," which rocks as hard as a lot of good '80s Mellencamp, maybe in "American Dream" and "Real Job" too), but I don't think they ever get to the level of, say, Rock City Angels or Faster Pussycat (much less Guns N Roses, who were already hitting by the time this came out.) Maybe Georgia Satellites now and then, or at least (in "Drop Of The Hat") Jason and the Scorchers. Wimpiest-sounding and most (post-Stink) Replacements-like cut, "Creep," is also the only one sung by the guitarist, Ward Dotson, who oddly enough used to be in the Gun Club. But the main singer, Matt Simon, still doesn't manage character to have cut in sleaze-metal L.A. at the time, and the rhythm section would be too stiff too. Ian McLagan's piano (doesn't say on which cuts) seems to help when it shows up, though. And the words hardly ever stick for more than a line at a time -- mostly girlfriend anxiety stuff, near as I can tell -- not even on a preening Westerberg level. The sound gets more muffled when it gets louder on Side Two, so maybe they were trying to do an Exile thing there, hard to tell. Christgau gave both this album and a previous one B+'s, which seems about right. (Pretty sure I Rock-a-Rama'd one of their LPs in Creem, maybe even this one.)

Uh, guess part of what I'm saying about them vs. the L.A. sleaze-glam stuff is that bands like Rock City Angels and (especially second album) Faster Pussycat, while also clearly Stones-infused, just had way more looseness and open-endedness to their arrangements, and dance groove to their rock; they didn't seem so reined in. Maybe also helped that those bands wanted to come off as rock stars, not just regular guys (though it's interesting that coming off as just regular guys didn't seem to hurt '70s bands like Earth Quake and Brownsville Station near so much.)

Phil, to what extent did the Plugz draw on Mexican-American music? At all?

Yeah, a lot. The original lineup was two Mexicans and a white bassist, and on their first album they noticed/figured out that hardcore and Tejano/norteño music have the exact same up-and-down rhythm, so they've got a great Latin-punk groove. Plus they covered "La Bamba" in like 90 seconds with rewritten punk-rock lyrics. On the second album, they brought in a saxophonist and went a little more Los Lobos-ish, except that it was released in 1981, and Los Lobos' first Slash record didn't come out until 1983. (They did an indie EP in 1978 that nobody outside of L.A. heard until it was reissued after they became critics' darlings.)

hardcore and Tejano/norteño music have the exact same up-and-down rhythm

Ha ha, pretty sure this is actually called "polka" (Poles and Germans having brought their accordions to Texas in the 19th Century, and the rest being the history.) But I get exactly what you're saying; thanks!

I'd kinda posit Tito Larriva as the Latin equivalent to Scott "Wino" Weinrich: a total lifer with a devoted cult but who's never managed to break through, despite occasional nods from major labels.

He's now indelibly in cine history, I think, for being the bandleader in the Tarantino vampire biker bar film, From Dusk Til Dawn.

I suppose the band was Tito & the Tarantulas and I recall them boosting an album to little success out here. But the movie's continued success in replay must be worth some royalties.

When I first got here long here I was initially surprised by how much the Mexican musicians in the restaurants were the same as the polka musicians in Pennsylvania. The Pennsy Germans and their gemutlichkeit thing is totally like Mexicano hospitality in soCal. And for well over a hundred years the big thing the dad would do would be to pass his accordion on to his son. Which sounds funny but these accordions were maximum things and expensive. It lost a lot of steam when Fender's electric guitars moved into the neighborhood.

Guitarist Dave Chandler, bassist Mark Adams, drummer Armando Acosta and
vocalist Scott Reagers crawled out of the industrial wasteland of Lomita,
CA, in 1979, playing dinosaur doom when L.A.¹s squalid underground was ruled
by the hardcore punk aesthetic of Black Flag. Vitus invoked the fuzzed-out,
drugged-out riff hypnosis of Sabbath at a time when their musical mentors in
the Drab Four were at their pre-Dio nadir.

All through the ¹80s, they wrote torpid doom epics while speed metal
exploded across L.A. County in the form of Metallica, Slayer and Dark Angel.
They were bellbottomed longhairs playing bleary-eyed dirge metal on an SST
roster that had built its punk-as-fuck reputation with Black Flag, Minutemen
and weirdo rock bands like Saccharine Trust and the Meat Puppets. Thrust
into a scene they had hardly anything in common with, Vitus spent most of
their career getting spit on while touring with the likes of Flag, the
Mentors and the Brood.

After recording two full-lengths (1984¹s Saint Vitus and 1985¹s Hallow¹s
Victim) and an EP (1985¹s The Walking Dead) with Vitus, Reagers split
mid-tour, within days of finding his own replacement in burgeoning DC
death-glam iconoclast Scott ³Wino² Weinrich. In 1986, the new Vitus lineup
recorded their six-song masterpiece, Born Too Late, with producer Joe
Carducci at Total Access Studios in Redondo Beach, CA. Released the
following year, the album was an unmitigated triumph of autobiographical
heaviness. Chandler¹s lyrics about alcoholism (³Dying Inside²), acid trips
(³Clear Windowpane²) and depression (³The Lost Feeling²) were trumped only
by those of the title track, which perfectly articulated Saint Vitus¹
acrimonious relationship with the rest of the world. And yet 23 years later,
Vitus have been embraced by metalheads everywhere, and Born Too Late is a
stone-cold classic. Here¹s how it went down.

Came in my mailbox today in promo for Born Too Late. I still like the Saint Vitus debut a lot. "Burial at Sea" and "The Psychopath" -- I put it on last week and it has a very faded distant quality, with the guitarist really working the wah. Every guitar line has a cocked wah tone, complimenting the dolorous vocals.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2010/01/gone-home-ten-years-later-really-no-one.html

The White Wizzard video deserves applause. It's totally not fair that it is doomed to only be enjoyed in ghettos like ours. Singer has best teeth and racy metal ready blue ski jacket combo in rock 'n' roll.

And judging by the video posted in last year's thread, they're upping their game too.

Yeah, the video is really excellent. And I totally agree with the band - the soprano sax truly is the most evil sound on earth.

Guessing -- judging from their opening spot on the Lady Gaga tour, and a stupid "night on the town with" piece in this morning's NY Times style section that mentioned they've got a major label coming out -- Semi-Precious Weapons are going to be the next glam-rock band to get some label push. Possible they've improved over the past two years, but here's what I wrote on Rhapsody about an earlier album by them, and they'd have to improve a whole lot for me to wind up giving a shit:

Semi Precious Weapons, We Love You (Razor & Tie): Just because their album cover looks colorfully flamboyant and the record is "produced by the legendary Tony Visconti (T. Rex, David Bowie, Morrissey)" (as the press bio puts it), doesn't mean that these NYC glam phonies don't play Brit-poppish wimp-rock for sad children. Which they sure seem to.

Cosloy-curated Matador Record punk compilation of local Austin mostly punk bands called Casual Victim Pile getting tons of press here; obviously not expecting to like much of it, but I emailed the label asking for a copy, and haven't heard back so maybe I'm persona non grata there. I did kind of like the album by one of the bands, the Golden Boys, that I heard a couple years ago though (Scorpion Stomp #2 on Hook Or Crook, sort of backwoods swamp goth blues thing a la Birthday Party or the Scientists.) Apparently some of the other bands are teen hardcore, and one of the ones with girls gets compared to Joan Jett and the Pretenders, something I would have to hear to believe. If anybody here happens to hear it, though, please say what you think.

Another one of the bands, Strange Boys, have been getting lots of hype in the past couple years as garage rock saviors, but judging from the two albums I've heard (last year's and this year's) they don't rock at all; just sound lazy and hazy and really low energy -- just more indie slackers. I don't get it. Though their new album (due out in late Feb) does have one song, "Da Da," where they seem to steal half the drunken tune, but none of the drunken rock, from "All Night Long" by Joe Walsh.

But truth is (what everybody reading this thread is already thinking), why am I even bothering with all that nerd-rock crap when there's a new Ratt album coming out? (Playing in the background now; sounds okay! -- Pearcy says they wanted to make it sound like it could have been the followup to Out Of The Cellar, and so far it kind of does!)

Best news I've heard all day! The last Dokken album sounded musically in line with Under Lock and Key and Back for the Attack, except Don can't really hit all the notes he used to hit and his voice just generally sounds beat. How does Pearcy's voice sound now?

Not bad! At least so far. I mean, his echo-screeching actually sounded kinda strained to me way back in 1984, but so far I'm impressed by the extent that his high register hasn't deteriorated since then. And the band doesn't seem to be dragging its feet, either! There are at least a couple songs that seem as fast as anything they did in the '80s. (But this is just my first time through; don't quote me. Album is called Infestation, btw, due out on Roadrunner toward the end of April.)

I had some good things to say about Pearcy's last solo album in 2008. I'm kinda looking forward to the new Ratt disc, as long as it sounds more like their earlier stuff than their latter-day stuff.

Earlier stuff, no question. (Wish I still had my copy of their debut EP on Time Coast Records with "Walking The Dog" on it, btw; how much is that worth these days?) Playing the new Airbourne now; maybe okay, maybe not, I'm not sure yet, but definitely nowhere near as good as the new Ratt (which comes out on the same day on the same record label.)

Finally caught up with Zalvation, the new Sensational Alex Harvey Band's record from 2006 without Alex, naturally. It's the originals plus a gamer who can't really pull off Alex's old Bertolt Brechtian/Kurt Weill naughty Euro-theatre and Cliff Richard impersonations. So it's really a Zal
Cleminson solo, or even more accurately, a reformulation of Tear Gas. Tear Gas was the pre-SAHBsters before Alex found 'em, with producer Davey Batchelor on vocals. One album, Piggy Go Better was not good, another s/t was a really good stab at ripping off Jeff Beck/Led Zep, much better than Leafhound, for example.

So Zalvation from 2006 redoes old SAHB numbers in the context of a straight hard rock/metal band which means it's Cleminson's show. First listen has it pretty good.

In Pennsy, all the bands influenced by the Dead End Kids did Alex Harvey and that eventually included Cinderella and Britny Fox and probably Poison when they were in Harrisburg. And Britny Fox finally committed to record the SAHB tune the Dead End Kids had been playing in bars from Reading to the Jersey shore for at least a decade, Midnight Moses. And that alone is worth the price of admission.

Cleminson ups the ante on it a little, supercharging the riff even a little more to make up for the lack of Alex. It doesn't really need an Alex Harvey to make it work though, any yob can carry off the vocal part since it's mostly just a semi-ontune stream of relation punctuated by shouts of "Hey! <pause> Hey! Hey! Hey!"

If you liked SAHB only because they were quaint you wouldn't like this so much because you only like the Alex Harvey part. If you liked them because of the Cleminson stuff, this is a go.

Angus Khan opened their album last year with a pretty deadly version of "Midnight Moses" too, I thought.

Best new Airbourne track so far: "It Ain't Over Til It's Over." Fast! (But seven songs in, and the first one not to make me impatient.)

Okay, liking "Steel Town" too. Aussies going for that blue-collar Pittsburgh AC/DC crowd. (Actually, there might be steel towns Down Under, too; I just don't know what they are.) Anyway, I should probably shut up about this record until I've played it through a couple times.

BTW, rather than post them all into this thread, select YouTubes:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2010/01/sludge-in-70s-that-was-name-of-my.html

If you liked SAHB only because they were quaint you wouldn't like this so much because you only like the Alex Harvey part. If you liked them because of the Cleminson stuff, this is a go.

Never thought of SAHB as "quaint," but I must be in the former camp. Listened to most of the sound samples online and couldn't finish. Alex's yowl is sorely missed.

Like said, the Brecht/Weill drama through the Scotsman isn't there. It's Tear Gas doing SAHB
stories.

Metal Mike via email, fwiw; not sure what this is in reference to:

the third JPP album (on MCA) has zip, no good songs
but the 1st/2nd combined (with three lead singers total counting Joe) -- ALMOST total one great album (produced by jack douglas, both)
lead track East Coast, West Coast is particular balls out good sounding (on 2nd lp)
the imaginary Orange Bowl combined set (Joe Perry Project w/ace frehley on/off for his best songs) is nearly awesome

x-post: Kind of reminded me of when I saw The Tubes without Fee Waybill. They were actually still pretty good; the killer riffs were all intact, but the replacement vocalist just didn't have the necessary oomph (even though Fee was never really a good singer, he definitely had character.) I can see where the new SAHB might be really fun live.

That's a good comparison. "White Punks on Dope," "Mondo Bondage" are great tunes on vinyl with no
visuals. But Waybill executed them with his own vision. I'd just mentioned upstream the old pre-debut Tube album releases for the first time and there are some things which are mostly just Roger Steen adn the rest of the Tubes being musos and they're not the same thing as those with Waybill as
ringmaster.

George,

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Now playing: Barn Burners, Bangers. On Metal Blade for some reason, this is straight-up boogie metal from Canada, recommended to fans of Priestess, Saviours or even Early Man (but not as thrashy as the latter). They're probably closest in spirit and sound to Saviours - raw-throated vocals, ultra-primitive riffing, drums like cardboard boxes full of dirt. Dumb song titles ("Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow," "Brohemoth") and the rhythm section lets down the side from time to time, but there's some decent stuff on here. If this was the '70s these guys would be Point Blank, probably. But it's 2010 so they're not that bluesy, just pretending to be beer-sodden bikers.

I had a blast with Barnburners, personally. Your take is pretty on the mark, although I remember thinking there were some really catchy songs on the disc. Only listened to it through once, though, and that was in the background, so I don't have any specifics.

So what do you guys think of Priestess? The new CD (out this week) wasn't doing much for me, but then again I can't say I gave it much of a chance. My wife wound up liking it, though. Was I missing anything?

By the way, back in nerd-rock land, I've decided it's okay to mention this here now that Scott offically came out as a Vampire Weekend fan yesterday: Phil, you should know that one of my Rhapsody colleagues swears that their current single, "Cousins" (least twee thing on their new album) sounds like Plugz to him. I am not Plugz-cognizant enough to say one or the other. (It's basically a ska song, if that's any help.)

Also: decided the new Airbourne is basically ignorable, beyond a song or two. (Which might still be more than you could say for their debut.)

The new Airbourne is slightly better than their debut, but like you I find it totally ignorable/forgettable. I dig the new Priestess - I liked the first one, and this one does what that one did (combine stoner rock with early '80s metal a la Judas Priest or Accept) with slightly more compositional ambition. A few songs really get galloping, and there's an eight-minute epic right in the middle of the disc that's swell.

Hmmm...I should probably swipe Priestess back from my better half, when she's done with it. Which may be a while.

Now playing: Thundertrain, Teenage Suicide, CD reissue on Gulcher from a few years back. Sounds killer. Boston band, originally came out on Jelly Records in 1977. Contains the original hard-rock "Hot For Teacher." Popoff compared them to DMZ, Dictators, Kiss, Dolls (most of which I don't buy) and (my favorite comparison obviously) "early Kix (early like before the first album.)" (How would he know??) I'm thinking maybe closer to...TKO? Streetheart minus the new wave disco embellishments? Hounds? Somebody in that school. Though those might be more due to the singer's bratty snotty teen high register (a voice I love, which no hard rock band I can think of has used in ages.) Really, I hear more Alice than Dolls or Kiss in their sound. Apparently singer Mach Bell went on to sing on (Popoff's words) "Joe Perry's worst solo record," which Popovic seems to agree with Metal Mike was his third. Jasper and Oliver on Thundertrain: "Very punky, similar to Twisted Sister in image and songs." Someday I should read the CD liner notes.

was excited to get a decent u.s. vinyl copy of the second battered ornaments album yesterday.

http://www.popsike.com/The-Battered-Ornaments-MantlePiece-Mint-UK-Harvest-69/390018256591.html

this was pete brown's group before he got, um, kicked out of his own group. doesn't COMPLETELY belong here, as its more of an improv/jazz/prog/rock kinda thing, but there is genuine rocking courtesy of chris spedding. pete brown belongs here though cuz he co-wrote i fee free, white room, and sunshine of your love with jack bruce.

the band history is kinda funny/sad:

"Brown formed Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments in 1968 and in 1969 the band recorded two albums; A Meal You Can Shake Hands With In The Dark and Mantlepiece, with a line up including Pete Bailey (percussion), Charlie Hart (keyboards), Dick Heckstall Smith (sax), George Kahn (sax), Roger Potter (bass), Chris Spedding (guitar) and Rob Tait (drums). Brown then suffered the ignominy of being thrown out of his own band, the day before they were due to support The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park. Brown's vocals were then removed from Mantlepiece and re-recorded by Chris Spedding and the band renamed The Battered Ornaments."

oops:

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20090610/230348249702.jpg

also got a decent mono copy of The Hot Ones! by The Standells yesterday. that's their all-covers album. doing the hits of the day Standells-style. I needed that.

Thinking now that the best major label (or probably otherwise) sleaze/ glam album of the '00s (which I probably wrongly stated on last year's thread might be last year's Last Vegas album) might actually be the '01 self-titled debut by Beautiful Creatures, feat. ex-Bang Tango shrieker Joe LeSte' and sounding (in the background, as we speak) basically like a good Bang Tango album. (Not as good as Dancin' On Coals, but still good.) Only competition I can think of at the moment would be Silvertide's Show And Tell (BMG imprint J Records, 2004.)

finally listening to michael bolton's (a.k.a. michael bolotin) band blackjack. their 1979 album. not doing much for me. though definitely more listenable than regular michael bolton.

Now American Dog's Hard, from 2007. Way more melody and finesse and actual songfulness than I'd remembered, or than you'd expect from a biker band whose most memorable chorus goes "Sometimes you eat the pussy, sometimes the pussy eats you." Rocks a lot harder than Beautiful Creatures, too -- Or maybe than anybody else in the '00s; not sure who the competition would be off hand. (Actually, with respect to Phil, I'd hope this is what Point Blank would sound like if they came out right about now; really, it's not that much different from Point Blank in the first place. Pretty sure Jackyl, to name an obvious predecessor, didn't boogie this hard.) What's weird is I'm not compelled to go out and track down all the other American Dog CDs -- This is the only one I own, and somehow it feels like enough for them. How different can the other ones be? (George can answer that question, I guess.) Which must mean they're lacking something, if I don't care about owning their complete ouevre -- Guess it's not like most of their songs really stick with me when the album's over, maybe. But I don't mind that much.

Now Necros Tangled Up/Live Or Else CD reissue on Rykodisc, from 2005 (recorded between 1986 and 1990). Kinda surprised to be finding the live tracks (the last 14 out of 25, ending with a ragged but still reasonably righteous "Nugent Medley" that's got "Great White Buffalo," "Strangelhold," "Cat Scratch Fever") sounding so much deadlier than the studio ones. In fact, too much of the actual Tangled Up album, give or take the classic title-track single and the Pink Floyd cover "Nile Song" and maybe the demiclassical instrumental "House Full Of Drunks," seems caught in some awkward in-joke No Man's Land between hardcore and grunge. On Live Or Else they come off a lot more like a legit hard rock band, somehow. "Race Riot" sounds like a bunch of skinheads in the audience getting rowdy though. (I saw them live plenty of times in the mid/late '80s; also went to shows with Barry Hennsler, who moonlighted at Kinko's in Ann Arbor and whose favorite new bands in 1987 were Guns N' Roses and White Zombie. His liner notes, frequently concerning the idiocy of Megadeth and Overkill fans the Necros encountered when they toured together, are really funny -- may have been published in Motorbooty first.)