Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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Amusing review of Wayne County's Blatantly Offensive EP.

And this is nicely done.

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that was me talking about wayne county albums. very impressed by the two late 70s albums i got a while back. was expecting some sort of haphazard novelty act a la cherry vanilla or divine, but instead got killer rock records that are totally in my keep pile.

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Yeah, I haveta say re Wayne/Jayne County. Was signed to MainMan in the mid-Seventies for awhile.

Speaking of Canadians, xhuxk mentions Mitchell's "Go for Soda" I think which refers to Frank Soda and the Imps, the band that backed Thor on Keep the Dogs Away. You can find this on YouTube, it was in Thor's An-Thor-Logy a few years ago. In '77, it greased as pre-Tappishing Tap, all three and a half priceless minutes of it. Antic posing fun.

So, the Tubes. Suddenly this board's favorite rock band, and about time. Pulled out Young And Rich, after being inspired by the revived old Scott thread about who made their T-shirts, and definitely enjoyed it a lot more than from the double What Do You Want From Live I'd pulled out a couple weeks ago (which nonetheless had some great moments, don't get me wrong.) Some notes: (1) Not sure how I'd never noticed before, but Y and R has some of the most hilarious (not too mention longwinded and multidirectional) liner notes in rock history, doesn't it? (2) As '70s Tubes LPs go, it's not especially a hard rock album, and I don't mind at all. In fact, it's basically an album of genre parodys -- blaxploitation soul, Phil Spector, disco, rockabilly, jazz, etc. (3) Also not sure why it never occurred to me before that "Pimp" should count as one of the world's first gangsta raps -- after say, Lightnin' Rod's Hustler's Convention or whatever. The music is even totally Superfly-style funk; the rude words (w/ chorus about controlling bitches "stole from a ten-year-old black kid" one Tube "pitcked up hitchhiking") spoken, and there's a part in the middle where they're actually rhymed rap-style. Though -- displaying my utter Zappa ignorance again -- did Frank also previously have raps like this, maybe even featuring pimps? Or am I all mixed up? (4) "Don't Touch Me There" probably influenced Meat Loaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" a year later. Also very Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show, which didn't chart til '78 but I think may have come out a couple years earlier. (5) "Slipped My Disco" ("perhaps in the manner of Crown Heights Affair" say the notes) has to be one of the first disco parodies on record, this being just 1976. Good one, too. (6) "Proud To Be An American" is obviously their Elvis parody ("solo in tribute to that great American, Scotty Moore"), not to mention "Bicentennial salute" and "slick and commercial, for a necessary dose of rack-job appeal"; also, the words come at you really fast, and I'd like to see them on paper sometime. (7) "Madam I'm Adam," unlike "Bob" by Weird Al Yankovic, is not a palindrome. My wife (who mainly knows just the Tubes' early '80s MTV pop hits where it's hard for me to understand how they kept a straight face) said its multiple time changes reminded her of Steely Dan. Which probably isn't far off.

Album actually went to #46 in the Billboard 200 (way higher than the debut's #113), and "Don't Touch Me There" to #61 as a single (their only pre-1981 Hot 100 hit), so obviously it got some airplay. So who was their audience? Aging glamsters and/or Zappaphiles? Seems they're just too weird and unserious for prog fans, though they had the chops for them. (Also, what did early punks think of "White Punks On Dope"?)

zappa had "willie the pimp", a long song on hot rats with capt. beefheart on vocals.

um, and there are rhymes on willie the pimp. beefheart kinda rhymes.

when i was a kid one of my fave rap songs was i do the rock by tim curry. tone loc could have done a good cover of it.

Edith Sitwell giving readings
14 Moscow Road
Osbert's giving champagne parties
Sachie's got a cold
Gertrude's hanging pictures
Alice making tea
Me, I do the only thing that still
makes sense to me
I do the Rock
I do the Rock Rock

John and Yoko farming beef
raising protein quota
Sometimes they make love and art
inside their dakota
Rodney's feeling sexy
Mick is really frightfully bold
Me, I do the only thing that stops me growing old
I do the Rock
I do the Rock Rock
I do the Rock Rock Rock

Well, it's stimulating

Solzhenitzin feels exposed
build a barbed-wired prison
Nietsche's six feet under but his babies still got rythm
Einstein's celebrating ten decates
but I'm afraid philosophy is just too much responsibility for me
I do the Rock
I do the Rock

Baby Ruth and Dizzy Dean
Best and Colin Cowdrey
Little Mo, Virginia Wade
Pistol Pete and O.J.
I've always like Di Maggio
and Rockne's pretty knute you know
I could never wack a ball with such velocity
I do the Rock
I do the Rock
I do the Rock
It's stimulating - I'm a keen student

Liz and Dick and Britt and Liza
Jaclyn, Kate and Farah
Meg and Roddy, John Travolta
Governor Brown and Linda
Interwiew and People Magazine
Miss Rona and the Queen
It must be really frightfull to attract publicity
I do the Rock
Myself
I do the Rock
Carter, Begin and Sadat
Breznhev, Teng and Castro
eyeryday negotiate us closer to desastro
Idi Amin and the Shah
and Al Fatah is quite bizarre
I could never get the hang of ideoligy
I do the Rock
I do the Rock
I do - I do - I do - do the Rock

not my spelling by the way! just grabbed it from the web. in the 70's tim curry and warren zevon always reminded me of each other.

Hah, what was the Tubes audience? Not very big in places like Reading I can tell you. I had to order the debut album special at the local record store near campus.

I went to see them with my old college girlfriend and the place -- a smallish theatre -- was at best only little more than half full. And they were dragging around a very big stage show. All the stuff you see in the pics in the gatefold double live album, all of it was on board. TV sets, bondage slab, risers and levels, the crew dressed up as Che-style revolutionary soldiers for going into the audience, smoke, lights.

The old girlfriend became very upset when they did Mondo Bondage and Don't Touch Me There, the former which had Re Styles and Waybill doing their hardcore bondage scene skit with nudity. At the end Waybill as Quay Lewd comes out with a pretty convincing looking rubber tinkler hanging out of his silver lame underwear, at which point she wanted to get up and leave. She was a spoil sport so I said she could go and wait in the lobby if she liked.

Anyway, that all cost a lot of money and the fans weren't teaming in except in the big urban centers and in London, so the Tubes cost themselves and A&M much. A YouTube video from the Old Grey Whistle Test of "White Punks On Dope" imparts a small flavor of it. However, it never translated into sales.

Paradoxically, they're more successful "Talk to Ya Later" 'hit' period had to have been a lot cheaper.

And you're right, Young & Rich is a most un-hard rock hard rock record.

This new Ratt album really is good, unsurprising stuff. If you liked their first few records, this one's worth hearing - simple hard rock songs played with skill and plenty of energy, and Stephen Pearcy's nasal sneer is still in place.

So, speaking of rock bands like the Tubes (and see also Brownsville Station, School Punks, 1974) who did songs about "punks" mere minutes before punks started at least theoretically meaning something else entirely so you couldn't do that anymore (unless you were Van Halen, who waited until 1978 for "Atomic Punk"), turns out the most rocking cut on the 1976 self-titled Arista debut (and apparently only album) by Slik is "The Kid's A Punk," which sounds midway between the Bay City Rollers and the Sweet with a little Elton "Philadelphia Freedom" tossed in and talks about how said punk kid looks like James Dean and you can tell he's a loser because of how he dresses, so watch out. Apparently Slik were another Rollers-style teeny-rock attempt from Scotland (never charted in the U.S.), featuring future Ultravoxer Midge Ure, though I'm not sure which guy he is on the cover since none of them look like robots. In fact, they are all wearing unavailable-in-the-U.K. minor league baseball jerseys on the back, and on the front the guy with the red plaid shirt and a toothpick sticking out his mouth might be trying to look like Bruce Springsteen. All four guys have short, well-groomed hair, too -- in 1976! Only song Ure wrote is "Do It Again," which starts like a mix between Motown and Raspberries-style powerpop until some Thin Lizzyfied guitars come in near the end. (A few years later, Ure would collaborate on one of Phil Lynott's solo LPs.)

Otherwise, maybe half bleh ballads or fairly softie pop-rock, with just a couple exceptions: Side One closer "Requiem," which is sort of a Brecht-Weillish cabaret merrygoround swirl surrounded by Yarbirds-like Gregorian gloom voices at the start and end, and then the last two on Side Two: "Bom Bom", a cover of a great wacky tropical novelty funk dance song by Bahamas musician Exuma that Jimmy Castor Bunch had a low-level r&b hit with in 1976; and "Dancerama," partly a crass disco move but opening and closing with ornate classical prancing around, which gives way to some super funky breaks of the sort that hip-hop guys would later sample off of Babe Ruth and Barrabas records. Awesome.

Okay, just checked Wiki (and edited some of the above accordingly) -- turns out the track "Forever And Ever" went #1 in the U.K., and then "Requiem" to #24. Wiki claims the former was just as ornate, but it didn't sound that way to me on the album. Music at the beginning of "Requiem" is "the first accordes of Joaquín Rodrigo's 'Concierto de Aranjuez', which had been a number 3 hit just two months before in the UK for Geoff Love's orchestra, billed as 'Manuel & the Music of the Mountains.'" Apparently there are also personnel connections with the Skids, and Ure was in the Rich Kids before he wound up in Ultravox.

Bezerk Times -- 1978 Bersekley only in Europe -- was a two-fer, four sides of Berserkley
acts Greg Kihn, The Rubinoos, Earth Quake and Tyla Gang at Rockpalast in Germany. First LP was Kihn and The Rubinoos. The Rubinoos are, for this, awful. Live, they're very sin and over-devoted to sock hop accapella singing and it sounds like 15 minutes of The Beach Boys' "In My Room" only not as good. The last song, "Ronnie," jazzes the energy with some guitar and voltage but it's way too late to resurrect the performance. D-

Greg Kihn Band before Greg Kihn Band had 'hits' like "Jeopardy" and "Happy Man" -- way before. So Kihn does amiable club band pop rock, a little of which sounds like a very happy Lou Reed in phrasing.
It bounces and rocks a bit. If you like it that's because you like happy guys doing some rock in a bar. Kihn wasn't much of a writer on these tunes. They're not catchy. There were catchy tunes on his first couple albums. These aren't them.

Earth Quake has souped up the voltage since Rockin' the World, delivering their most aggressive shots starting with "Street Fever" which suffers from a poor mix with no bass. After the sound man gets his act in gear, odds improve on a medley of "Mr. Security" and something called "From Here to
Eternity". And the loud speed rock gets thrown down on the climax, "Trainride." Bringing it to a satisfactory close.

Tyla Gang is the real surprise. It's all tough and fast pub rock with hook from the Yachtless album and some early Stiff singles I think, notably a ditty called "Styrofoam," which a number of people have copied. Some of it treads in Mott-era Mott the Hoople territory, songs with titles like "The Young
Lords" and "On the Street" where they're totally into the Lords of Flatbush thing, and "Whizz Kid."
Great material played with great vigor, so you don't even notice that Sean Tyla really doesn't sing much, just telling you his rhyming stories while the band rocks out in time to the lyrics.

I loved this sampler in '78. Now I can totally do without the Rubinoos, who have no place here. And Greg Kihn is a fairly mediocre proposition, too. If you didn't like Earth Quake before this won't do it, either.

If you never heard the Tyla Gang you oughta. Avoid Moonproof which is nothing like this.

I think I have exactly one Tyla Gang song in my house -- "Fireball," on a real good pub rock compilation CD from a couple of years ago called Goodbye Nashville Hello Camden Town. I will listen to it. (Guess they also contributed some to the Berskeley Spitballs LP though.)

Picked up Greg Kihn's first solo LP for a buck last month; it's somewhere in the to-be-listened-to pile. I wasn't expecting too much.

Also still have my Tim Curry "I Do The Rock" 45, fwiw, Scott. (Though in '79 I mixed him up more with fellow rapper Ian Dury than with Zevon.)

And George, your Tubes date story was hilarious. That album of pre-debut cuts you mentioned upthread, though -- I'm wondering if those tracks are the same as this CD I have called Demo Daze And Radio Waves, which came out on Phoenix Gems Records in 2000. Five tracks of studio demos, Dec. 1973; three tracks of a Live Radio Broadcast out of Berkeley in March 1974; one live track from San Francisco, June 1974. Sounds like there might be overlap, at least; they definitely do that "white dopes on junk" thing in the middle of "White Punks," for instance, which lasts 6:27. The rest gets extremely fusiony and weirdly wacked-out real often, a precision mess, songs about lunch and TV game shows and mutated girlfriends and parents saying you'll never amount to anything, not that many of those were obvious to me just listening. Definitely a lot noisier than they are on Young And Rich, though.

Liner notes from guitarist Bill Spooner a/k/a Sputnik suggest that "White Punks On Dope" was actually about Jefferson Airplane (!), based on Gram Parsons having called them that in an interview once! He also says a few songs never wound up on Tubes LPs, because producers didn't like them, and the band was incapable of agreeing on what to include. And he claims lots of the band's original props and set were done "on a rock bottom budget - sometimes no budget at all." E.g.: Paper mache saxophones; eight-inch platform heels from V-8 juice cans.

I'm wondering if those tracks are the same as this CD I have called Demo Daze And Radio Waves, which came out on Phoenix Gems Records in 2000. Five tracks of studio demos, Dec. 1973; three tracks of a Live Radio Broadcast out of Berkeley in March 1974; one live track from San Francisco, June 1974. Sounds like there might be overlap, at least;

No live stuff on the thing I have but it sounds like the studio material you have was republished on
this one with some extra studio/home studio material scraped from the bottom of the barrel. Same story about "white punks on dope/white dopes on junk" in the liner notes to this one although Waybill keeps saying the lyrics also have something to do with rich kids in the SF scene. Lots of stuff about dimestore costumes, one set to be donned for something called the Dinosaur Stomp, kit made of oil cans, because the dinosaurs are now oil! Waybill and a couple of the other Tubes seem to concede this joke did not catch on with audiences although it was hard to get all the oil out of the oil cans so when they put them on, they always got drippings on themselves.

And one of the better songs is definitely one about parents telling something he'll never amount to anything. Song called "Hoy Boy" kicks everything off, then it's in to "White Punks on Dope."

Not absolutely hating the current album by this hairy co-ed stoner-blues duo from Brooklyn, fwiw, though I'm not ready to recommend you rush out and buy it, either, and I doubt I'll return to it much myself. (Plus, yeah, they're from Brooklyn. And a duo. And they call themselves Naked Heroes collectively, and George Michael Jackson and Merica Lee individually. So they have plenty of marks against them from the gitgo):

http://www.myspace.com/thenakedheroes

Also fwiw, the one duo of that ilk that I have wound up hanging onto the last couple albums by would be these guys -- Left Lane Cruiser, from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Probably helps that do lots of songs about food:

http://www.myspace.com/leftlanecruiser

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The Runaways Live at the Agora in '76, a radio broadcast which was probably issued on a small number of vinyl copies as a promotional. Since then it's been booted and reissued on CD, probably by several.

Not stepped on in the studio like the live in Japan disc so it sounds like you'd expect a hard rock band to be in the mid-Seventies. In other words, it takes them a few songs to get really warmed up.

The version of "Cherry Bomb" is the oddest I've heard, faster than on record with a meaningless guitar solo tacked on at the beginning before the singing comes in. It sounds like they had a bit of stage nerves.

Joan Jett still sounds really young, still singing out of her nose when she's not shouting.

By "You Drive Me Wild" the band's going and while some of these songs were never any good -- "Secrets", the cover of Lou Reed's "Rock 'n' Roll" -- the "Wild", "Is It Day or Night" and "Blackmail" are. The Runaways proved they could do turgid slow blooz rock so that you can strut poorly on guitar with "Johnny Guitar" and by that point, the crowd is entirely with them. "Johnny Guitar" was awful on their second album, it's not really better here, just mo-o-r-e louder.

"Dead End Justice" ends things and the bad girls juvie hall breakout equiv of "A Quick One While He's Away" is perfectly executed, still capable of making me laugh. Is the prison guard good looking, either Currie or Jett asks. "He hit me with a board, it felt just like a sword." Sounds like a Kim Fowley lyric to me.

And Joan Jett's Bottom Line concert from 1980, a radio broadcast by WNEW, in which she takes time out to thank all the DJs, Jim Testa, Vin Scelsa, etc. This is right after Bad Reputation and it underlines that the album was selling well, at least in part due to strong buzz from regional radio airplay.

This is right before I Love Rock 'n' Roll was recorded. The band has Eric Ambel on guitar who would leave to be in the Del-Lords. Smart move!

But the demos for the second, or pre-production songs, at least some of them, have already been done and "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" is on this as the first encore. Before anyone knew it would be a world wide smash.

It's interesting to hear the band rush through it, not giving it much of a sendup at all and the crowd, other than it being the encore, acting indifferent as it's not heard it. The one the band really wants to play is the second encore tune, "I Love Playin' With Fire."

Joan Jett used to do "Shout" ala "Animal House" on methamphetamines live and it's here and I still can't stand it although it was always a crowd pleaser. "Black Leather" which wasn't so hot on a late-period Runaways album after people were wandering away is redone a bit and here it sounds like good speed rock.

Good version of "Rebel Rebel" and most excellent is a cover of Charlie Karp & the Namedroppers' "Too Bad on Your Birthday" which Kasenetz-Katz also had Ram Jam do.

Something I don't think was put to vinyl called "Teenage Sex Machine" and the usual enthusiastic performances of "Wooly Bully," "Do You Wanna Touch" and "You Don't Know What You've Got", the latter which I've always thought was one of her best tunes, among quite a few.

Don't know why this was never made into a real live release. Guess they didn't have to resort to it
after the next album.

i was listening to Waitin' For The Night the other day and i'd forgotten how much i like that album. ""Little Sister" is such a great song.

So that '75 Greg Kihn debut that I mentioned in re: George's Berserkely comp appraisal a couple days ago wound up at the top of the pile quicker than I'd thought. Also sounds considerably less powerpop than I'd expected, at least until "Worse Or Better" at the start of Side Two. First side initially hit me as way too twee to bother with, though after a couple listens the guitar tapestries (at the end of "Any Other Woman" and "Kid From Louisville") and songs ("Kid From Louisville" again, plus "Emily Davison"'s movie-starlet-I-think suicide a la Hot Chocolate's "Emma") kicked in. Some very pretty folky-rocky melodies on that side too; George said "happy Lou Reed" about the comp tracks, and that might make some sense. Side Two rocks a little harder though not a lot harder, especially the aforementioned side-opener. After that Kihn does a decent cover of Jerry Butler/Righteous Brothers' "He Will Break Your Heart" with a good middle verse I'd never noticed before, then there's two songs that sound like precursors of, of all people, Electric Angels, the no-sell 1990 hair-glam band in Stairway's Top 40 (whose cassette maybe I should give a spin again soon.)

Anyway, an unassuming album, but likeably unassuming. And I assume Kihn might've got more into, say, Tom Petty or Rick Springfield territory later, though I'm not sure how many more dollar bills I'll expend figuring out when. What I mainly remember hearing on Detroit radio in pre-"Breakup Song"/"Jeopardy" days was the (I think) Springsteen cover "Rendesvous"; could've sworn he covered "For You"," too, but I'm not seeing it listed among his album tracks in Whitburn. Saw a whole bunch of different '80s Kihn LPs in the dollar bins at Waterloo today, though; if anybody knows whether any of them are worth that much, tell me. The 1986 one had a cover of the Only Ones' "Another Girl Another Planet," which surprised me. By then he'd apparently stopped charting.

Actually heard more Lou Reed, more seedy urban songwriting in general, on this '76 Elliot Murphy album Lost Generation (apparently his second) I've played a few times this week. Some Johnny Thunders and even Peter Laughner too, in ballad mode for both, in the melodies and songwriting, if not at all the guitars those names imply. Still seems kind of odd for a major label (RCA) album around that time, unless they were going for another Bowie or something. There's a real ambition toward glam decadence in the songwriting, Brian Jones namedrops and a whole song about Eva Braun (complete with reams of Hitler details which may or may not be supposed to be jokes, hard to tell) a couple years before the Boomtown Rats did one, but mostly lots of lyrics about urban teenagers having driven their lives off a cliff since nobody was watching, or whatever. White punks (and punkettes) on dope, I guess, except with way more pretensions toward poetry about it than the Tubes had. Tunes are good, though, especially on the second side -- "Lost Generation," "Manhattan Rock," and "Lookin Back" (seemingly his attempt at his own "Like A Rolling Stone") probably being the best. Not really hard rock, but somehow in the same headspace as a lot of stuff that was in the middle '70s. So how come nobody ever talks about the guy?

Actually, looks like Christgau talked about him (and unlike me spelled his first name Elliott correctly). He liked the debut, which I've never heard, best. Also gives no indication that Murphy had any connection to glam rock, though I swear I hear as much Reed and Bowie and Thunders as Dylan in his sound. (He does refer to the third album's production as "hard rock," though.) Maybe the glam's all in my head. Anyway, fwiw:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Elliott+Murphy

Marsh in the red Rolling Stone guide calls his lyric style "F. Scott Fitzgerald out of Lou Reed," so that's closer. (Still stretching it for this thread, though, so feel free to completely ignore all this.)

Oh okay, re: Kihn. Apparently he did "For You" on an album in 1977, but he didn't hit the Billboard 200 until his third album, in 1978.

i like that murphy album. that's a good one.

got the first steve gibbons band album yesterday. pub rock as seen thru the lens of the capricorn records roster. or something. i dig it.

http://www.musicobsession.com/Pictures/s/t/stevegibbons193825.jpg

got this yesterday and it makes me reassess how i feel about gong. i never listened to them much. had some later 70's albums that i never really listened to cuz they seemed too twee or something. (this was years ago though. i might like them more now.) anyway, this soundtrack is a mishmash of album stuff and god knows what else, but it's really cool. its got that propulsive jet engine thrust of krautrock/hawkwind/pink fairies. really like it.

http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/848/cover_26141225112008.jpg

thanx for the CDs chuck! MUCH appreciated.

I've been on a Motorhead and Hawkwind trip for a month or so along with getting into some more rock organ/keyboard groups like ELP & The Nice along with picking up another Atomic Rooster CD "In Hearing of Atomic Rooster", all of these really inspired by watching a bunch of BBC documentaries on Youtube.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer was one of those 70s groups that was huge that I really never heard anything outside the radio. I got a couple of their albums and they are not quite as angry as I expected. There are moments on both Brain Salad Surgery and Tarkus that are have that drive, but I think the lack of guitar kind of brings down the violent sound. I do really like their version of "Fanfare for the Common Man" and that version of "America" by the Nice rocks. I just don't think a band like this one could ever make that kind of cash now.

Atomic Rooster definitely was a band with an identity crisis, but I guess ole Vincent was pretty much nuts, as the band and sound pretty much changes record to record. "In Hearing Of..." is interesting and has some good tracks, but it doesn't really hold a candle to "Death Walks Behind You" or even the first one with Carl Palmer.

Finally found a copy of "Warrior on the Edge of Time" by Hawkwind and also got "Quark, Strangeness & Time". Warrior is a pretty cool album, better than expected, as it is still really driving and psychedelic. Quark has some good tunes, but I do agree that a whole lot of the balls and drive must have left after Lemmy was gone. Maybe Hawkwind was just onto some other sounds, as Quark is a bit new wave sounding. I can hear a bit of Lydon in Calvert's singing, so I do get a where that comparison comes up.

I've been on a big Motorhead kick tied to Hawkwind and picked up four more of their albums going in order: "Another Perfect Day", "Rock n' Roll", "Iron Fist" & "Orgasmatron". I pretty much liked them all and really the one with Brian Robertson is really quite good, if his tone is a bit more rounded and not as edgy with all of the chorus. The band became less bluesy when Wurzel and Phil Campbell became the guitarists, but it is still pretty solid. I've liked it enough that I want to get into some of their later albums.

i always thought the best thing about The Nice was that every album had one or two killer pop/psych nuggets on them that completely overshadow emerson's wanking for me. you could make an album comp of Nice songs and it would be one of the best psych rock albums that people have never heard.

Re ELP, there's definitely guitar on the three-LP Welcome Back My Friends..." live thing. That was all over FM classic rock radio and even on TV when I was a kid, Lake playing a gold top Les Paul.

You can hear guitar on ELP's debut, too. And I'm sure there's some on [I]Brain Salad Surgery although it may be a bit indistinguishable from Emerson's fuzzy synthing.

The Isle of Wight live ELP CD that came out a few years ago has some violence to it. Comes with a TV broadcast of the performance, too. It's very similar to the Pictures at an Exhibition performance, the same year I think, maybe a bit earlier.

If I listen to ELP, I always go for Brain Salad or Welcome Back... first, the debut second, Tarkus if at all, third.

Here's me a couple years ago doing a wee bit of Keith Emerson imitation whimsically:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2008/12/rock-n-roll-party-in-box-made-in-china.html

Surprisingly, I probably listen to ELP more now than Yes when I reach for that kind of thing. Originally, it was the other way around. Lake's voice aged a lot better with me.

xp You're welcome, Scott! And welcome to the Steve Gibbons Revival club!

Played Rossington Collins Band's Anytime Anyplace Anywhere from 1980 while making and eating ham and eggs and turning down the volume during the Sunday morning politics show commercials. Dale Krantz sure could belt it out Janis-style, and there are definitely a few guitar solos playing it pretty for Atlanta and a couple real funky breaks (most notably, almost Babe-Ruthily again, in the middle of "Don't Misunderstand Me," the single that went #55 pop) and boogie-woogieing Billy Powell ivory here and there. But outside of the single, the Skynyrd survivors sure do seem to have forgotten how to craft hooks. The lack of memorable tunes almost seems like a precursor of jam bands -- as is their boring name, maybe. Still, not a bad listen, in total.

Dug out Alvin Lee's In Tennessee last night and re-listened. Like it even a bit more than I did a few years ago for the Voice (mostly because of the video from RockPalast last week):

Alvin Lee used to be famous, but now he's unpopular like Robert Kidney. His new CD, In Tennessee, puts him together with Scotty Moore and what amounts to the Sun rhythm section. They're on board to play either slim-and-slam dancing tunes or rockabilly and rapid-fire blues jams tacked onto minute ravers harkening back to Lee's "Hold Me Tight."

Lee and company are ductile and pointed, though they deliver one or two five-minute selections too many. In Tennessee closes satisfyingly with "I'm Going Home." It doesn't collapse into clichés, Lee's calling card getting solid revivification from a much-less-is-a-way-lot-more treatment.

Man really love the Memphis rockin' rockabilly and Elvis -- so the Sun rhythm section loves him back for it. Funny how one can make this spare material rock so hard, the growl of rhythm guitar, lone snapping snare and hi-hat, the plonked acoustic bass that thumps, and attitude being worth its weight in gold. You can literally learn all you need to know about pure rock 'n' roll guitar from this record. Plus Alvin throws in some of his jazzy R&B jumps into the mix. And one old timey country blues, "Gettin' Nowhere Fast."

Plus it always helps if you can say "Ah-owwww!" real good. Next to about three TYA classic recordings, this is one of his best. And it closes on a southern-fried version of "Goin' Home."

bought some records and shuffling thru them i thought i noticed a 12 inch single of plastic bertrand's ca plane pour moi but it turns out its the whole album. american copy on sire. never heard the whole thing before!

okay, this is attempt number #22823424 to dig be bop deluxe. listening to sunburst finish for the first time right now...

i give up. and i don't feel like putting on drastic plastic or modern music either even though i've never heard them.

i put on steve gibbon band's rollin' on album instead.

i'm digging this album a little:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/MStanley_Friends.jpg

pre-dates the first MSB album by a couple of years. good joe walsh guitar on it too. epic closing track "poet's day" is pretty cool. on the track "funky is the drummer" joe walsh is introduced as "Mahavishnu Joe Walsh". which is pretty darn funny.

i always have to remind myself that michael stanley was in Silk. they had one decent album on ABC called smooth as raw silk.

now playing: randy burns and the sky dog band. from 1971. not really digging it. and it doesn't really belong on this thread anyway. here's xgau's review:

Randy Burns and the Sky Dog Band [Mercury, 1971]
My friend from New Haven says, "Except for `17 Years on Your River,' I don't think I'd like this record if I weren't from New Haven." Exactly. This is the kind of testament every loyal local group ought to leave, with a few excellent songs (I also like "Living in the Country") and lots of memories for all the folks it's entertained. Unfortunately, few local groups ever reach this level of competence, but in any case the economics of the music industry discourage such moderate success--if your appeal isn't big-time, you're lucky to record at all, and if it is, chances are even or better that you're working a dumb variation on somebody else's gimmick. Which is not to suggest that I'd give up one great industry group like Crazy Horse for a dozen Sky Dog Bands, but merely to lament a paradox. B-

Played a very manly but very shittily produced 12-inch seven-song EP I'd retained from 2004 by these guys, the Petitioners, who I still know basically nothing about, today. The vocals are Danzig-brute cloddiness, but they manage to do a real good version of Roky Erikson and the Aliens' "Creature With the Atom Brain" and a passable one of Manitoba and Wild Kingdom's "Speedball" (actually not sure I've ever heard the original version of that one), plus they do a sort of death-metal parody called "Sweden," and then one called "Over 30 (Need Not Apply)" where they visit the Capitol Building and Jimmy Iovine informs them their bassist used to be in Bang Tango and is secretly 45 years old.

http://www.myspace.com/thepetitioners

Am now playing a CD that Smog Veil sent me by these guys, This Moment In Black History, who are apparently from Cleveland (it being Smog Veil and all), even though the CD came with no press release. Most of it is just hardcore tantrums, so what, albeit with surprisingly tasty noisy guitar parts by a guy (named Buddy Akita their myspace says) who is not at all averse to melody or rock'n'roll rhythm. 13 songs in 32 minutes, not bad, including a noisy Run-DMC parody (with Schooly D-ish clank beats) called "My Notes" about, uh, how the guy rapping likes to carry around notes in his pocket. But don't worry, that's the only rap thing they do. And it jumps out of the tantrums as much as the guitar solos do. (Actually just played the CD,Public Square, twice straight.)

http://www.myspace.com/thismomentinblackhistory

Also played Black N Blue's self-titled album, from 1984, today. Total dumbshits, obviously, but rocking ones. Most memorable songs: "School Of Hard Knocks" (rhymes with "we're gonna rock your socks off"); "Hold On To 18" ("Jack and Diane" reference?? Also they say "I know what I need but don't know how to get it" so maybe they should've asked Johnny Rotten. What they want, obviously, is to stay young, even though nobody understands them now, since they're so young. No idea if they were really that young, though -- Whitburn only says they were from Portland); fast blitz "I'm the King" ("of the concrete jungle" -- a Wailers/Specials reference?); and their cover of "Action" by the Sweet (which they don't improve but manage not to destroy either.) (Ha ha, just checked Popoff - three of those, all but "Hard Knocks," are his favorites too. He gave the album an 8.) Anyway, don't think I've ever heard a Twisted Sister album this good (though that's clearly what they seem to be going for.) Went to #116 in Billboard; two followups which I've never heard went #110 and #133. Allegedly got some MTV play, too.

And Scott, that Plastic Bertrand LP is loads of fun! Can't believe you've never heard it before. (Think I also used to have a second one by him that was more discofied, though that's been gone for decades.)

Also, I clearly like Be-Bop Deluxe more than you (and less selectively than George.) Just played their often-enjoyable live double last week.

And earlnash, yeah, Hawkwind's Quark Strangeness and Charm is kind of new wave, but try not to hold that against it. (As is the Hawklords album, if you ever find it; mine's long gone but Scott taped me his on the other side of the Gettovetts' Missionaries Moving a few years ago; thanks Scott!) Also think Motorhead's Iron Fist has always been underrated, though I definitely side in general with their early bluesier stuff over their later more metal stuff. The one song I always really loved from Another Perfect Day was "Shine."

I was a huge Black 'N Blue fan back in the day. I was 11 when the debut came out and my best friend and I thought they were amazing. The first is the most rocking - Gene Simmons really sunk his claws into them deep for the followups, and they are definitely poppier. The second album, Without Love, is still my favorite; I think it is because they are so blissfully cheesy - songs like "Nature of The Beach" and "Rockin' On Heaven's Door" are as idiotic as the titles imply, but the band doesn't care. It also has their masterpiece, "Bombastic Plastic", which is trying to be real metal and failing beautifully, once again living up to its name; and a credible cover of "Same Old Song and Dance". The third album, Nasty Nasty had a good title track and the ballad "I'll Be There For You", which was the closest they came to a hit.

There was an Ultimate Collection comp that has everything you need if you're not a fan from their heyday.

Actually, the more I listen to that This Moment In Black History CD (four times in two days! That may not be a recommendation, per se', but it's something -- definitely can't say that about any other new album so far in 2010), the more I wonder if they're actually even classifiable as a hardcore band. They definitely do lotsa slamdancey songs (though oddly listenable ones -- usually scream-yelped in an intense high register that doesn't grate on me), but even those don't necessarily stay slamdancey. Rhythm section knows how to roll; doesn't always stick to moshpit polkas (though there's that, too.) Some notable guitar parts are in "Pollen Count" (which isn't that fast to begin with), "MFA," "About Last Night," "Panopticon" (maybe the most classic Cleveland punk sound -- Pagans maybe? Electric Eels?? -- on the record), "Photonegative" (more Detroit in that one), "Precinct" (more Sabbath doom). Definitely hearing some surf and psychedelic and spy-movie-soundtrack influence, too. Would love (1) some hardcore expert to calibrate what hardcore bands they most sound like and (2) some guitar expert to calibrate what guitarist the guitarist most sounds like.

Meanwhile, Tom Ewing on the Spike Drivers (a "precociously psychedelic Detroit band from c. 1966," Frank Kogan calls them):

http://ittookseconds.tumblr.com/post/372870480/five-minutes-and-thirty-two-seconds-pressed

And Joshua Langhoff on Helloween's all-covers album from a few years ago (which I also liked a lot, though I've never connected with anything else they've done. Supposedly they have a career retrospective coming out, though, so we'll see what happens with that one):

http://joshlanghoff.blogspot.com/2010/02/best-thing-i-heard-today-helloween.html

That was a decent album. The strength of it came in the choice of songs they were actually good at. More than half of them, as it turned out.

Good version of "Faith Healer" by SAHB, "Locomotive Breath" by Tull, "Space Oddity" and the Beatles "A;; My Loving." In addition to those mentioned. Not so good, an Abba cover, a latter period Mahogany Rush thing, the Scorpions "He's a Woman, She's a Man" -- too close to home, and Faith No More.

I think Stradivarius might have done one of these collections, too.

listening to a punk comp from 1983. The Defiant Pose. well, mostly punk. the first side has the alarm and wall of voodoo and the fall on it for some reason. but the second side is one great anthem after another.

you know, i might change my mind tomorrow if you asked me, but "loud, proud, & punk" just might be my favorite punk anthem of all time. i couldn't even tell you how many times i've played it. and when i play it i have to play it at least five times in a row. just like demented teenaged scott would have.

1. Holy War - Lords Of The New Church
2. Drug Train - The Cramps
3. Marching On - The Alarm
4. Gone Are The Days - Crown Of Thorns
5. On Interstate 15 - Wall Of Voodoo
6. Fiery Jack - The Fall
7. The Crack - Cosmetics
8. Evacuate - Chelsea
9. Reality - Chron Gen
10. Loud Proud & Punk - The Business
11. Mr Nobody - Major Accident
12. Insane Society - Menace
13. Fascist Dictator - The Cortinas
14. Red London - Sham 69
15. The Freeze - The Models
16. Political Stu - Circle Jerks

Endtables reissue comp on Drag City is great! You need this, chuck. late-70's Louisville band led by giant transgender/transvestite singer who kinda sounds like david thomas. very stooge-y punky stuff. probably been reissued in the past, but this is from the original tapes and has great live stuff on it as well. 15 year old bass player rules. i'm gonna write it up for my Decibel column. all the recordings are from 1979.

http://a302.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/34/l_1b04c32e6f5ac605a2c791ded890c4d5.jpg

Also, I clearly like Be-Bop Deluxe more than you (and less selectively than George.) Just played their often-enjoyable live double last week.

Live in the Air Age pretty much spans the Bill Nelson gamut from pastoral to gymnastic on guitar. "Blazing Apostles" is probably my favorite from it. Jaunty and Euro and by the last third of it the band bites down.

My fannish enjoyment of Savoy Brown knows no bounds. A cover version of "Needle and Spoon" from Raw Sienna.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/02/09/funky-rock-n-roll-needle-and-spoon/

Listening to Alvin Lee's Saguitar from 2007 which I kinda remember xhuxk reviewing but I couldn't find it.

His "Rapper" song eats it. Take that off and you have an album about as consistent if not quite as
good as In Tennessee although more hard rocked.

"Smoking Rope" is "I'm a Man" update and if you like the Memphis tapeslap sound, it's liberally sprink;ed all through the record.

There's a song called "Memphis" which is not the original, somewhere between Johnny Cash and Elvis doing hard rock.

First four tunes sound like the Ten Years Later band only Alvin's songwriting is better than it was on Rocket Fuel.

And there's a Live at Rockpalast CD of the Ten Years Later band containing almost the same set TYA was doing at the Fillmore Easts and Wests in the early Seventies. Only Ten Years Later covered
"Hey Joe".

It's Friday and this is too odd and funny for many words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtatY7bOUY