Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

i'm always looking to upgrade my brotherhood albums. can never find perfect copies! i love those things. there are two if you don't count their experimental psych/krautrock album friendsound. post-raiders band for drake levin and phil volk.

Demons album is pretty cool. "I Hate You" is the best track by far. all about the horrible things the singer wants to do to some girl. mostly he just wants to kill her. but also open her mouth and fill it full of mace.

http://www.vinylrecords.ch/D/DE/Demons/Demons/the-demons-10.jpg

bonus back cover!

http://www.vinylrecords.ch/D/DE/Demons/Demons/the-demons-11.jpg

putting stuff out in the store and i come across The MCA Sound Conspiracy, a comp MCA put out in 1971 to sell its bands on various labels such as Decca, Kapp, Uni, and Coral. here are the bands they are promoting:

wishbone ash (love them)
help
matthews' southern comfort (love them)
melissa
american eagle
fanny adams
virgil fox (strangest act to ever be sold to a hard rock audience?)
chelsea
glass harp (love them)
jeremiah (had this album. terrible. really bad.)
raw

out of all them , southern comfort was the only one with a genuine hit.

i never tire of the fuzz sludge cover of california dreamin' on the brotherhood album. drake 4ever.

I had that Demons album. Don't remember a thing about it except the cover. I'd pay at least five dollars to know if Robbie Twyford and Martin Butler are still crossdressing.

robbie looks a little like wayne county!

you'd like "I Hate You". i wonder if GG Allin was a fan. the lyrics are totally proto-GG.

"She's So Tuf," "She's a Rebel."

the song "Hamburger Holocaust" on the Snopek album could easily be a Tubes song, a Crack The Sky song, or a Tin Huey song. Take your pick. so why would i rather listen to these bands than a Zappa record? it's a mystery.

Demons fellah:

http://martinbutlermusic.com/bio.html

curious about the Fanny Adams album sampled on that MCA sampler. serious slow bloooze thud rock stuff. and an aussie band too! guitarist played with the beegees apparently. and before they settled on Fanny Adams they were called Thighbone Howl! Wonder if they played any Buffalo gigs. They aren't that far off.

250,000 copies! really? seems like a lot. but what do i know.

Yeah, halfway to gold seems high. 75,000 would have been exceptional for a band like that.

The first seven Bob Seger albums are on the net all in one place, so I downloaded a few so as to make better sense of the reissue threat which made it all sound fair to great.

Couldn't stand the guy after he was all over the radio, much like my aversion to Steve Miller after The Joker. Too many bar bands doing too many nights filled up with the stuff.

Anyway, I'm going to digest the debut, Mongrel, Back in '72 and Seven tonight.

Originally, I had Beautiful Loser and the live Silver Bullet band thing. BL was a mixed affair, "Jody Girl-type" stuff, I hated. "Nutbush City Limits" was cool. Also always liked "Get Out of Denver."

the debut and mongrel are so great. truly truly great. haven't listened to back in '72 in a long time.

er, by debut i mean ramblin' gamblin' man. which was his capitol debut anyway.

i still need a copy of noah.

wait, i don't know why i said his capitol debut. it was the first album he ever put out. don't mind me.

Listening to Ramblin Gamblin Man and [/i]Mongrel[/i]. Initially boy, by the late Seventies he'd really shmaltzed it up and toned the thumping funky hard rock down. I can hear the shmaltz starting to creep in around Back in '72, certainly not like when he got gigantic, but the nugget of it is crystallizing. "Stealer" has him imitating Free. Boy, he'd never do that again.

This could just as well be on Rolling Country but it's roots rock n roll. Know idea that Little Jimmy Dickens actually had a record company which thought he was worth singles and LPs since his rep is 'pet' of Brad Paisley.

Been listening to Rock Me which is thirty tunes of straight rock n roll, rockabilly and country, pretty much minus the look-at-the-fat-ugly women and she-makes-my-dick-hard jokes and skits tacked onto the end of Paisley
albums.

And all the time I thought he was just the Fifties version of a short person expressing his lifelong rage at women for being turned down for only coming up to their crotches. Well, wait ... at least the songs on this don't feature that. The Grand Ole Opry, I imagine, wouldn't cotton to it.

Paisley's veiled dirty joke re Carrie Underwood at an award ceremony this year makes a lot more sense when you've absorbed more Little Jimmy Dickens, this album of which sounds like fair knock-off Hank Williams and Sun rhythm section stuff.

Don't take this too seriously. Little Jimmy Dickens sucks. If you were moved to write a Twilight Zone episode, you could base it on being trapped in a bar where Little Jimmy Dickens played every night. One expects more from titles like "I'm Little But I'm Loud" or "Wait Til the Ship Hits the Sand" and they never deliver.

I can't believe I wasted a 30 cent slave-labor-in-China made CD-R on this.

"Where the Buffalo Trud" and he really means 'house full of mud/where the buffalo turd/is a mighty mighty messy messy house'. Except with 'turd' instead of 'trud' it doesn't rhyme. Haw.

Ha ha. Maybe we should just rename this the "Rolling Whatever Old Music Three Old Guys Happening To Be Listening To Today" Thread.

And now I'm wondering whether Roger Miller's "You Can't Rollerskate In A Buffalo Herd" was really about skating in buffalo turds, too.

Anyway. Believe it or not, I only own a couple of the pre-Beautiful Loser Seger albums per se' myself: The Bob Seger System (w/ "Ramblin Gamblin Man" and "2+2=?" etc.) and Seven (w/ "Get Out Of Denver" and "UMC" etc) on vinyl; Smokin O.P.s on CD. The first two of those are good but admittedly spotty (as is Beautiful Losers obviously); the third is a covers album that, to be honest, has always struck me as fairly pointless. Not sure why I ever would've gotten rid of Mongrel, since I always thought "Lucifer" was great; must have decided that was even spottier. But honestly, right now I'm fine with the 1966- 1967 bootleg CD that my wife gave me for Christmas, and even more so, the close-to-flawless 27-song CD-R (which he decided to name Never Mind the Bullets Here's Early Bob Seger) that MX80-loving ILMer Myonga Von Bontee put together late last fall and generously sent out to people like Scott and me. Still very much considering giving that one 30 Pazz & Jop points this year.

Then again, I've never personally had a problem with Stranger In Town and Night Moves, which, while admittedly not as unabashedly hard rock and a little more ballady than the earlier albums, are a lot more consisently crafty (which is partly to say the ballads tend to be a lot better than his earlier ballads), and have songwriting peaks at least as high. Seger doesn't start to lose me until the '80s, really, and I even like a couple songs after that okay. Related thread:

Bob Seger Reissue News

could easily be a Tubes song, a Crack The Sky song, or a Tin Huey song. Take your pick. so why would i rather listen to these bands than a Zappa record?

Because they (and heck, throw in MX-80 Sound too) rock harder and have catchier, more memorable, less amorphous songs than Zappa did 95 percent of the time, maybe? Or at least that's always been my (possibly ill-informed) impression. But there's tons of Zappa I've never checked out, so who the heck knows? Guess I've kinda had a prejudice against the guy since high school, and always assumed his jokes were stupid, though he must have had something going on, since his sound clearly influenced lots of bands I like. (Oh yeah, also throw in Uz Jsme Doma and Jono El Grande, whose albums got 10 Pazz & Jop points from me each last year. And Plastic People Of The Universe/Pulnoc too, right? All those East Europeans.) So clearly I'm some kind of closeted Zappa fan who just won't admit it. Would definitely welcome recommendations. I do kind of like "Flower Punk" and "I'm the Slime," if that's any help.

By the way, anybody have any opinion about the Plimsouls? I've always assumed they were utter wimps, early powerpop-sans-power twerps, but I got this CD recorded live on Halloween 1981 in the mail last week, and the sound's way too thin and muddy, but I'm maybe getting the idea that they might have been, say, a West Coast version of the Romantics (which wouldn't be bad) as opposed to, say, ick, a West Coast version of the Fleshtones (which comparison Christgau made once.)

ugh, the Plimsouls! talk about boring, nothing there wanna-be power-schlock irritants. caught them opening for Costello at the Greek back in '82 to my eternal regret. let's just say that compared to their interminably monochromatic set even the drabbest of the drab Elvis C Imperial Boredom ballads sounded like good fun. thanx for a lot reminding me, Chuck. i hope to return the favor one day.

Man, that album by The Pop is all kinds of good. I know I had some singles by them, but never a full album. They were really going for the cheap trick vibe as far as the power pop goes. meaning, there is more actual *power* on the album as well as excellent pop hooks. produced by earl mankey of sparks and concrete blonde and god knows what else. oh, and some songs just sound like cheap trick a bunch. which is fine by me.

and really digging the cortinas album too. tricky song structures. another one of those brit pop punk bands with secret love for prog.

that demons album is pretty wimpy in comparison actually. to both the cortinas and the pop album. but it does have its charms.

But there's tons of Zappa I've never checked out, so who the heck knows?

Me but I'm too hungover right now to list it all. "Why Dontcha Do Me Right" by examples immediately comes to MY mind. "Directly from My Heart to You" on Weasels Ripped My Flesh. And yoiu gotta love "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" from Absolutely Free if only for two lyrics: "Be a jerk/Go to work!" and the "Smother my daughter in chocolate syrup/Strap her on again/Oh baby!" thing.

This:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_Allures

Lotsa stuff on Shut Up n Play Yer Guitar.

"The Illinois Enema Bandit" from Zappa in New York, a couple others on that, also "Punky's Whips."

A lot of Them Or Us, where he has Steve Vai all over.

http://www.amazon.com/Them-Us-Frank-Zappa/dp/B0000009TA

Guess I wasn't as hungover as I thought. There's more...threat or menace?

"Man With the Woman Head", "Muffin' Man" from Bongo Fury, actually most of the second side and "Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead" because I like it, although it's more a show band tune.

"I'm the Slime" from Over-nite Sensation

Backing up John Lennon on Some Time in New York City aka Playground Psychotics/A Small Eternity With Yoko Ono, particularly "Baby Please Don't Go."

i DO like zappa. i like most of the 60's mothers stuff. i like stuff on most of the studio albums from the 70's up to but not including studio tan. the live 70's stuff can be ridiculous in a jaw-dropping way. and funky! like p-funk and mahavishnu and miles davis in rock mode and every fusion band ever all playing at once. which is definitely not for everybody, but he could get seriously heavy when he wanted to. the sour anti-hippie stuff and dated boob and race humor is what makes me cringe sometimes. but like i said, i'm rarely in the MOOD for zappa. you know? but i have respect.

that was me. scott. using maria's computer at the store.

LOVING this album the other day by the way. frank zappa on drums, i think. from 1965. awesome BIG BIG beat sandy nelson sunset strip type surf instrumentals. HIGHLY recommended. love the production. HUGE drums.

http://lebowskisays.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/hollywoodpersuaders.jpg

Odds and ends, and excuse me if this repeats what's upthread:

--Runaways movie's been generating great excitement for months among livejournal twenty-something lesbians who like High School Musical.

--Depends on the actual character of the actual movie, but the Runaways would definitely be NPR fodder just as a movie about the Stooges or the Dolls or the Velvets or the Kinks would be NPR fodder. Doesn't mean that that would be the movie's prime audience, just that NPR would be fine with it unless it's fundamentally pr0n. NPR might portray the band more as proto-punk than as girl-glam, and might not mention Gary Glitter, but that depends on the reviewer and what he or she knows. Someone's being NPR doesn't automatically make that person dishonest, and if Ken Tucker were reviewing he'd get it right, 'cept I don't think he does movies for them. (In '76 I had a convo with my favorite film teacher, Bill Routt, in college, who agreed with me that the Ramones were too cartoony to be real punk rock; he cited the Runaways as real punk rock, also the Dolls. I hadn't heard the Runaways, but disputed the Dolls being real punks since they were too generous and intellectual. Not too generous and intellectual for me, mind you - I have nothing against genuine intellectualism, not to mention intelligence - just too intellectual to fit into the category "punk," which I didn't use as an unmitigated compliment. I suggested Lynyrd Skynyrd as real punks. I'd have gone with "Smokin' In The Boys Room" too. I didn't know the Tubes had put "punk" into one of their album titles; it's just that they sounded like creep kids acting tough. My idea of punk was that it was made by punks, i.e., weak, potentially vicious kids sounding tough. The Rolling Stones weren't punks but Syndicate Of Sound and ? & The Mysterians and all those kids swiping riffs and rave-ups from the Yardbirds and hardness from the Stones were punks. In the mid '70s I'd have considered metal bands willing to play fast as punk, unless they were too into showing off their musicianship. I thought the Stooges were about punk rather than being punk. That's a compliment. I'd rather be about punk than be punk myself. But anyway, usage changed on me, so I then went with the Stooges as my model: turn-our-bodies-inside-out-and-throw-'em-on-the-gears romantics - except I keep including aspects of my old definition anyway.)

--The first couple of those Runaways advance reviews were creepy. Using the word "pedophile" or "perv" does not make one clever, and those reviewers come off as stupid ignorant mediocrities pretending to a chipper kind of knowingness. As for what actual teens actually like, that surely depends on which teens, since they're hardly homogenous, and some teens will be proud of liking what other teens don't. But a Runaways movie might be a hard sell to any audience. We'll see. If the film is coming up through Sundance it might be positioning itself as "cool" rather than going for the mass teen market. Or it might be going for both the cool and the mass audience at once, which is what Bandslam tried with disastrous results commercially (didn't see it, but apparently it was a sensitive indie-leaning movie that attempted to sell itself as a knee-slapping teen comedy).

--Speaking of Bandslam, a friend of mine gave me the CD; not worth spending much on, since presumably you can come up with "Rebel Rebel" and "Femme Fatale" easily enough if you don't already have 'em. A couple of promising tracks by a couple of unknowns (the Burning Hotels' "Stuck In The Middle," or stuck between Franz Ferdinand and glam, at any rate; and the Daze's "Blizzard Woman Blues," which is a good Jon Spencerish mess), and actually worth hunting down is I Can't Go On, I'll Go On ft. Aly Michalka covering Steve Wynn's "Amphetamine," Aly being entirely credible on hard rock, with soul horns a nice touch. The other Aly numbers, though, are forgettable, a predictable "I Want You To Want Me" (I much preferred that Mexican actor's comedy take last year) and a reasonable version of "Someone To Fall Back On," which unfortunately is a song I hate. I Can't Go On, I'll Go On ft. Vanessa Hudgens doing "Everything I Own" is almost unlistenable, Hudgens trying a rocked-out version of the old Bread song. Director Todd Graff's liner notes say, "Anyone who thinks Vanessa Hudgens is just a dance pop diva need only listen to her wail the climactic note at the end of the song. That's all her - no studio tricks." (Hudgens - whom I'd never call a diva - has somehow done five or so great songs in her life, and maybe the greatness isn't just luck or coincidence when you're up to five, but she still doesn't have strong voice or much in the way of vocal personality, and "wailing" isn't in her range, at least not without the help of a studio.)

--Smog Veil is the only label left that sends me actual physical copies of CDs, though I've confessed to Fly PR that they're not likely to get more than blog or message-board action from me. But I do listen to what gets sent, while I almost never listen to what comes linked on an email. Anyhow, on one listen while doing the dishes I liked This Moment In Black History enough to think, "I'll likely give this more listens." Hardcore With Chops is how I categorized them, and that could be anything from emo to art rock, actually, but anyhow there's plenty going on from what I could tell while not paying attention.

--My guess is that you get very few Pazz & Jop voters voting only "Pitchfork albums"; it's just that the other albums and tracks they vote for don't coalesce into any particular area. It's not those voters' fault that they're the sort who care enough to vote in a Voice year-end poll. (To my surprise I discover I've got a Phoenix album from 2000 that I must have listened to, liked enough to keep, and then totally forgot about, including anything about how it sounds. Did they used to be better? I guess I'll find out in the next week or so.)

The first couple of those Runaways advance reviews were creepy. Using the word "pedophile" or "perv" does not make one clever, and those reviewers come off as stupid ignorant mediocrities pretending to a chipper kind of knowingness. As for what actual teens actually like, that surely depends on which teens, since they're hardly homogenous, and some teens will be proud of liking what other teens don't. But a Runaways movie might be a hard sell to any audience.

Yeah, they were. Done by people who probably listen to NPR and believe it has an audience that counts for something.

And I say that as someone who's actually been on NPR a number of times. It has no audience compared to real radio.
True story although a little off track: I was invited to do a half hour segment on terrorism and national security stuff a couple years ago and the the interviewer, it might've been Terry Gross, was so ignorant on basic issues I'd personally dealt with I had to keep correcting her. As a result, the session become became unbearable at about fifteen minutes in, we agreed to quit and it never aired. So, as an understandable consequence, I've nothing but contempt for things 'NPR' or NPR-ish. It's radio for people with a certain set of preconceptions and received wisdoms about things, kind of like the anti-matter of general GOP talk readio.

I think The Runaways will, as you say, be a hard sell. It'll be limited to the Laemmle in Pasadena, I bet, which is the art house -- and it's a nice play to see niche movies. But it's audience is at least half retirees because of a generous age discount, never young people, and the upper middle and upper crust from in the town who would have never brooked or had any exposure to the reality.

Hmmm, I deleted the This Moment in Black History e-mail as soon as it came in. Maybe I shouldn't have.

The Phoenix song I remember liking from that album (which I also didn't hate at the time, though I no longer own) was "If I Ever Feel Better." For some reason I always confused them back then with a different French band, called Mellow, who I guess everybody quickly forgot about.

Scott, is the album by the Pop you got their self-titled indie one from 1977, or their Arista one called Go! from 1979? George is a fan of the debut though not the followup if I remember correctly; Christgau gave both B+'s. I've never heard the first one. Have always thought the followup was pretty good but not great; pulled it out a few months ago and liked whichever songs had powerchords, and whichever ones were sort of artsy in a Roxy/early XTC/20-20 kind of way. Don't remember ever thinking of Cheap Trick (or the Clash, who Xgau mentions.) Will try to play it again sometime soon to figure out which tracks those were.

Yesterday I saw a mid-'70s K-Tel-type comp in a Salvation Army with a Barry Mann song from 1976 I'd never heard of before on it called "The Princess And The Punk." Would have bought it had it been selling for $1, but they wanted $2, and I have principles. Apparently the song went to #78 on the Billboard 200 in August of '76, two months after the Ramones' debut charted. In case you wondered, Barry Mann's only actual hit as a performer -- as opposed to a songwriter with his wife Cynthia Weil -- was "Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)," #7 in 1961.

I think what's always bugged me about Zappa might mostly be his vocals, which have always struck me as smug and distanced in a way I just couldn't get past. But that's no reason to ignore the guitars, I'm sure. And as I said, there's tons I haven't heard, and the guy was so ridiculoulsy prolific that his output has always just hit me as overwhelming; I never knew where to start. Got reissues of a couple Mothers albums in the mail several years ago, and had trouble getting through them. But somebody I'll try to hear some tracks George named.

Zappa might mostly be his vocals, which have always struck me as smug

That'd be right, sardonic and/or 'creepy.' But I like that, maybe just not all the time.

xp "...someday I'll try to hear...," obv.

Also, great to see Frank on this thread! (The Phoenix album I was referring to was their 2000 debut one, United, btw, if that wasn't clear. The more recent stuff I've paid attention to definitely seemed duller to me, and like I said, after initially thinking it was okay I decided even that early CD was too marginal to even hang on to. Still stumped about why they eventually picked up such a critical rep.) (Also, never "hard rock" at all, btw; though I think I determined early on that they were somehow trying to update '70s soft-rock. Which is probably why inititally they seemed potentially interesting to me.)

Speaking of The Runaways movie, having a video performance of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts doing a perfunctory, even crappy, run through of "Cherry Bomb" in the videos section -- it's number 6, after all the interviews, doesn't do it any favors. Should have resisted the urge to expand the site beyond the trailer.

I love the first Phoenix album. United. I still have my copy that i got via you probably. i bought the next one hoping it would be more of the same and found it really dull. kinda bummed me out. haven't listened since. though obviously i hear their big hit in that car commercial all the time these days. i like Mellow too! or the one album i have anyway.

yeah, the Pop album i got was Go! I posted the records i bought the other night upthread a ways. 20/20, cortinas, pezband, demons, the pop, snopek. kind of a theme to my buying choices i guess. there are VERY definite cheap trick moves on Go! when i go to the store tomorrow i'll play it again and see which specific tracks they are.

you might try Weasels Ripped My Flesh by zappa, chuck. aside from having one of the greatest record covers of all time, its got some great guitar and even lowell george is on it. "the eric dolphy memorial barbecue" is a great tune. all live tracks, but its more than just a live album.

actually, i think it would be REALLY interesting just to hear what you have to say about any random zappa album. just to see what you make of them.

i thought the this moment in black history disc sounded kinda cool. but man i can't get past how dumb that name is. what if they get really good and actually get popular and are stuck with it?

i REPEAT, get your hands on the Endtables reissue from drag city. I think they are pretty good about sending promos out if you ask nice.

and, chuck, thankthankthank you for that x reissue! i can't even tell you how much i love that thing. jeez, just that first song "suck suck" alone! i should have heard that a long time ago.

don't tell regular ilx people this, but i don't worship the saints. i LIKE the saints. and no doubt stranded is one of the top tracks of the 70's, but when i play entire albums by the saints i start to get bored. x are WAY more my speed. as are grong grong. never really listened to radio birdman much. my fave saints album might actually be their van morrison homage all fools day on the mighty tvt records. as far as 70's one-iconic-punk-anthem bands goes i'd rather listen to an album by the only ones. and its weird cuz on paper i should love the first three saints albums as much as i love the first three wire albums or buzzcocks albums or take your pick of 50 other albums by 50 other bands.

Actually, really don't tell anybody, but I've never even been that huge a fan of "I'm Stranded." Like it fine; never cared about it. Would not end up on a list of my 500 favorite singles from the '70s.

Thinking of emailing Drag City about Endtables, but hesitant since I never wound up writing about that album by Death I begged out of them last year (which did at least make my Pazz & Jop ballot) or the new one by Red Krayola With Art & Language I begged out of them a couple months ago (which sounded so formlessly snoozy that I couldn't get into at all, despite it theoretically consisting of "profiles" of Wile E. Coyote, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, John Wayne, and Ad Reinhardt -- the "profiles," inasmuch as I could pay attention to them, apparently in turn consisting at least partly of spoken word descriptions of how the profiles of said celebs' faces look. But every time I tried to listen, my mind would wander within minutes. Fwiw, I've never been what you'd call a big Red Krayola fan -- don't even know most of their stuff - but I used to think Kangaroo! was okay, and I kind of like the '68-'02 singles comp that Drag City put out a few years ago.)

In other artsy-farsty news, I played the first Ultravox album (self-titled 1977 one with exclamation mark at end of title) twice in the past few days, which has never happened before in history. Biggest surprise was "Satday Night In The City Of The Dead", the opening oi!- before-the-fact terrace shout with rappy vocal rhythms reminiscent of "Subterrranean Homesick Blues" and/or what Costello's "Pump It Up" would sound like a year later. Second biggest surprise was how much "I Want To Be A Machine," which is over seven minutes long including the weird string parts toward the end, and maybe "The Wild The Beautiful And The Damned," almost six minutes long, reminded me of Van Der Graaf Generator, though it's possible the band (and producer Eno) were aiming more for the more prog end of '70s Roxy Music. "Wide Boys" at start of Side Two was faster and more fun, like the less prog end of '70s Roxy and with lyrics that sure sound more like "white boys" to me. Reggae attempts in the middle of Side Two seemed sadly rhythmically inept even when called "Dangerous Rhythm." Closer "My Sex," supposedly the album's classic cut though I'm not entirely sure why, predates both the Austrailian synth-rock band Mi Sex (its title) and the Normal's "Warm Leatherette" from a year later (disembodied talking about being turned on by car crashes); it's also the only cut that really sounded as robotic as I always imagine Ultravox to sound in my head (i.e., like they want to be machines -- predates Gary Numan too.) Usually albumwide John Foxx's vocals feel more human and less hard to take than I'd have predicted, too, though maybe that's just because yesterday I played the album right after Heaven 17's Penthouse And Pavement from 1981, which has really horrible vocals, mostly spouting seemingly moronic political slogans ("We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang" was their answer to "One Nation Under A Groove" right?) But I gotta say, there is some real abrasiveness and funk in that LP's synth beats -- reminded me of what certain not-entirely-shitty "industrial" bands on Wax Trax or wherever would start doing a half-decade or so later.

i'm an unabashed heaven 17 fan. i can't lie. was really happy to see them on Solid Gold when i was a teen. but i mostly listened to the 12 inch singles which is where i think they thrived.

i love the first three ultravox albums. a.k.a. the "john foxx era".

xp, actually I should've said that new Red Krayola album is "portraits" of famous people, not "profiles." (Same difference, though.)

i never got into red krayola either. i did buy that mayo thompson reissue that drag city put out on vinyl and i like that a lot. Corky's Debt To His Father.

--So I played United yesterday, in the background while doing dishes, of course, which is how I keep the world at bay, and the music stayed resolutely in the background, though I noticed it going from Prog to Kenny G in the blink of an eye (the dishwater got in my eye so I had to blink). The singer - rather than defining him as "Another Indie Recessive Fellow" I define him less generically as "Guy With A Dull Voice."

(For a person who lives alone I seem to generate plenty of dishes. This is a good thing too, otherwise I would never listen to any actual CDs, would only listen through my computer.)

--Incredibly, Plan B - a present-day British grime guy with singer-songwriter ambitions - qualifies for this thread with his recent UK chart track "Stay Too Long," which is the Garage Of Where Our Parents Used To Park Their Car But Then We Set Up Our Amps And Mics In It rather than the Garage Of Paradise, anyhow the '65 organ-soul-guitar freneticism like the Raiders and the Rascals. Plan B has weak gumless singing which makes him more funny than effective when he warbles, but when he raps and shouts he adds to the music's kick, and is still funny. I need to go review this and rate it high for the Singles Jukebox, since it's the sort of track my colleagues will despise.

Yeah, but what do you think of "Funky Squaredance" on United? I think some people who generally liked the album hated that section. I loved/love it.

I'd have gone with "Smokin' In The Boys Room" too. I didn't know the Tubes had put "punk" into one of their album titles; it's just that they sounded like creep kids acting tough.

Frank, you meant Brownsville Station here, not the Tubes, right?

So I pulled out the Pop's Go!, and I'm actually hearing more Clash (especially on the second side -- "Falling For Carmen," "Legal Tender Love," etc.) than Cheap Trick. Or at least Clashy pub-rock, pretty and punchy, with fairly fluid reggae leanings; "I Want To Touch You" is another reggae thing -- same year Joe Jackson and the Police debuted doing something vaguely similar fwiw, though I'd say those two acts both benefited from bassists who had better chops. The two most blatant hardish powerpop cuts (maybe these are the ones where Scott's hearing Cheap Trick?), I'd say, are "She Really Means That Much To Me" and "Waiting For The Night," though I'd call them more a prefiguring of the poppier side of '80s AOR; first one has a riff that sounds a lot like Rick Springfield. Guess the Babys were doing that sort of thing around the same time too, come to think of it. Trickiest, most modern and electronic arrangements come mostly at the LP's start, though I'd compare "Under The Microscope" and "Shakeaway" more to the Cars, actually, or maybe Tonic For The Troops Boomtown Rats (also 1979), and then "Beat Temptation" reminds me of maybe a rockier version of something off XTC's Drums And Wires (also 1979), but with a cool kind of Eno-disco pulse underneath. The cut that's always stuck with me most, though (think my college radio station played it a lot) is definitely "Go!" itself, for its sweet propulsive jangle (somewhere in the vicinity of the Records' great "Starry Eyes," also 1979) and its heavenly call and response parts. It's a real nice album overall, and yeah, like Scott said, Earle Mankey leaves his Sparksy mark on it. For a supposed L.A. "powerpop" band, they sound fairly eccentric to my ears.

Uh...That Pop album has words, too. Some of which I even took notice of while listening, though they apparently left no lasting impression. Singer's fine, in a new wave AOR pop mode; harmonies sometimes better.

The Tubes Now from 1977 -- again, not really a hard rock album, at least not much until you get to the loud energetic prog jamming in the closing "You're No Fun." And overall, probably too much time spent on showtune/lounge-jazz parodies; blues spoof "Golden Boy," seemingly about a phenom of indeterminate color who can't get a tan, doesn't do much for me. "This Town," about making it in San Francisco I think, and "Pound Of Flesh," about a 90-pound weakling with a long schlong, only slightly better. But they still seem ahead of their time a lot, predating Axl Rose's singing (high-flying vibrato warble when Fee does his "when you come down" part in his "Eight Miles High" interpolation midway through the quitting-cigs-is-hard opener "Smoke {La Vie En Fumer}"); '80s Peter Gabriel (the groove and vocals of "I'm Just A Mess"); early Was (Not Was)/James Chance Ornette-rock (free jazz sax bleats in "Cathy's Clone," though maybe that's why they give "special thanks to Captain Beefheart" on the cover); and most astoundingly, '80s hip-hop turntablists (Side Two opener "God-Bird-Change," a fast sort of fusion collage that goes through all sorts of changes before winding up on an insane extended drum break that sounds like the Incredible Bongo Band before almost turning into "The Mexican"). So basically, sometimes their eclecticism works, and sometimes it doesn't. And you wonder if they're capable of taking anything seriously at all until you remember they wound up doing just that in the '80s, and actually weren't as fun.

Listening to a lot of Armored Saint today, to sort of recontextualize them since they've got a new album (first one in a decade) coming out next month. They were never a metal band, not even on their debut in '84; they were a hard rock band. Their "hit single" from that disc, "Can U Deliver," rewrites the riff from Black Sabbath's "Megalomania" (off Sabotage), and the guitar tones are close to Dio-era Iommi until the solos come in; then they're pure post-Nugent arena rawk, same as the riffs, and vocalist John Bush is an Ian Gillan-style belter. Listening now, I feel like I should have paid more attention in the past.

chuck, you really do need a copy of mongrel. i don't know why you thought it was weak/uneven. such a great album.

The Pop's Go was never like the Babys or even The Records -- except they both worked in pop
-- or I would have liked it more. I still like the debut. The guitars are way louder, the vocals are sneering on at least half of it. And it's a lot more rock 'n' roll. If I had to compare Go to something, it'd be early Sparks. Which I never liked much but there's that Earle Mankey connection.

I used to like Now a lot but it certainly wasn't hard rock. My favorite song on it was a cover, what "My Head is My Only House Unless it Rains." The Tubes pretty much boiled down everything that was good on Now into pastiches and collages which wound up on the double live album -- which did have a fair amount of hard rock on it. They were pretty much sunk in the US at that point. That is until the Talk to You Later hit. They even did a record with Todd Rundgren, a kind of rock opera about TV.

I forget the name of it. Unlistenable, pretty much.

Yeah, so xhuxk's recollection upstream was right. I just didn't like Go! at all. There was an EP that came out after it. It back to straight Hollywood power pop. Had a copy. It was pleasant if nondescript.

I can't believe we're talking about The Pop and not The Knack with the death of Doug Fieger. I though The Pop's debut was as good as Get the Knack -- as far as my tastes go, only harder and more street, which fit the fact that they had to do it themselves without any major label interest. 'Course, it didn't have "My Sharona"
either.