Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

Another great playlist right now is called Proto-Punk/Trash Rawk, with Radio Birdman, Dictators, Runaways, Suzi Quatro, New York Dolls, Ramones, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, more Kiss, early Motorhead, Slade, Sweet, etc. What else would go good with that?

The firs three Joan Jett & the Blackhearts albums, Silverhead, first two Starz albums, Rich Kids, the Move's heavier stuff, first Heavy Metal Kids record, Mott the Hoople's Live album. That's a start.

Oh, and I kept the playlist mostly to 1973-77, probably because I had just seen the Runaways movie. I also had some Lou Reed, Dr. Feelgood, Eddie & the Hot Rods, Mott the Hoople, 101ers, Stranglers, Bowie, Big Star, Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, John Cale, Jobriath, Alex Harvey, George Brigman, Hydra, T. Rex, Heavy Metal Kids, Nugent, Ian Hunter, Gary Glitter, Streetwalkers, AC/DC and Pink Fairies.

Silverhead is a great idea, I've never really heard them yet.

...Count Biships, Brownsville Station, Earth Quake, Flamin' Groovies, Sparks circa Kimono My House/Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing, Ram Jam, the '70s band Mr. Big, Rags, Flame, Artful Dodger, Rocket From The Tombs -- honestly, that's just scratching the surface. But like Scott said, peruse the last few Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock threads and you'll have more ideas that you can possibly use, I promise.

What Streetwalkers do you like, Fastnbulbous? We were discussing them last year; I got an album for $1 but coldn't really get into it.

Also, are these playlists on lastfm, or where? (Is "lastfm" just basically assumed when people say "playlist" now? I am so out of it.)

Bunch more, using bands you've listed as a guideline: Hello, Mud, Racey, Fanny, Bay City Rollers, Dave Edmunds, David Werner, Smokey, Raspberries, Stories, Tubes, Arrows, Sailor, Crack The Sky, Good Rats, Max Webster, early John Hiatt, Elliot Murphy, Coloured Balls, Buster Brown, Thundertrain, Billion Dollar Babies, Hank The Knife And The Jets, Rudolf Rock Und Die Schocker...(Obviously depends on how heavy you wanna keep it, but you've listed plenty of non-heavy stuff already.)

Some of those obviously maybe "too prog" or "too bubblegum" (and for many of them you might want to be selective as to particular tracks and/or albums); depends on what exactly you're looking for, and how you're defining "Proto-Punk/Trash Rawk" (that spelling still always makes me wince, but whatever.) Also, if you're going to include the Streetwalkers and John Cale, you seriously might want to read what is said upthread about Kevin Coyne, since seems to me his aesthetic came close to both of their neighborhoods and probably did it better -- at least judging from the live LP I've got, which has really grown on me since I discussed it up there. (Also, he's proto-punk both in the sense that John Lydon and Mark E. Smith are apparently big fans, and that he was lyrically obsessed with both insane people and a dying England.)

Yeah, definitely re Kevin Coyne. If you check the Youtube vids of stuff I sampled on my blog, you may find some of that definitely has the potential to fit in with your theme.

I have Coyne's Marjory Razorblade and Dynamite Daze, but they haven't really stuck to my brain yet. I figured it would be good eccentric singer-songwriter stuff along the lines of Peter Hammill. I'll revisit, though maybe not rocking enough for that particular playlist. I own Streetwalkers' Red Card (1976), which is fun. I've heard MP3s of Downtown Flyers (1975) which is nearly as good. I have a 2TB flac collection ripped from my CDs both at home, and backed up at work. I make the playlists with Mediamonkey, and at home, use them with my Squeezebox system throughout the house, controlled both on the desktop computer and wireless remote. I play music usually for most of my workday either on the powered Harman speakers or headphones.

might want to try these too:

http://www.myspace.com/grannysintentions

ugly custard

incredible hog

heavy jelly

warm dust

toad

'igginbottom's wrench

http://www.myspace.com/dogthatbitpeople71

paper bubble

http://www.myspace.com/fuzzyduck70

hairy chapter

deaf cuckoo

flasket brinner

shakey vick

plastic penny

agnes strange

wooden horse

http://www.myspace.com/rainbowffolly67

hunter muskett

mighty baby

magic mixture

http://www.myspace.com/ginhouse1971

just kidding.

I cut the http off this so it wouldn't mount. So cut and paste if you wan't another example of bizarre, if mostly rocking, extremist stuff from Pennsy's soft white underbelly. It's The Mysterious Fog...

youtube.com/watch?v=W4IRY4BbpEE

To be fair, this falls right in the great statistical mean of the stuff discussed here. He could do a lot worse.

http://www.spin.com/articles/watch-slash-wolfmother-frontman-rock-leno

As far as this number is concerned, it <strike>almost</strike> makes a stoner rock vibe respectable
rather than just monochromatic, slow and turgid.

Should I get this record?

Fave comment, in response to someone who made a tangential comment about Lady Gaga collaboration
and apparent resistance to growing old more gracefully:

what do you know? youre just som e liberal junkie who knows nothing about music. so shut up
you retard.

Wait, was that comment to you, George, about one of your Pokerface posts? Or to Slash? (By the way, I'm curious to what extent you think Pokerface's brand of anti-Semitism is connected to their Lehigh Valley roots, in general. I keep remembering all those Nazi paraphernalia booths at the Q-Mart in Quakertown. Also wondering how to what extent their pondering "What is a Turkish Mongol – Yiddish speaking race of Ashekenazi/Khazars who have little to no SHEMite blood in them doing in Palestine to begin with?" is a running meme within the U.S. Jew-hate realm; there's an unduly crimes-of-Israel-obsessed commentator on Genesis Communication -- the radio network that also runs Alex Jones --who also brings up the Israeli-Jews-are-not-actually-Semites thing a lot, but in a seemingly more civilized way than Pokerface; I'd actually never heard the argument before, and now I'm guessing it's a red flag.)

Haven't heard the Slash album; actually didn't even think to check it out (even though Rhapsody asked me to write up a post on solo albums by guitarists last week pegged to its release.) Maybe I'll try sometime. Here's my solo guitarists thing. I'm really no expert, so don't laugh too much at it. I know there's probably lots of great ones I missed:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/04/riffing.html

Anybody else heard this new EP by Batusis on Smog Veil? Cheetah Chrome and Sylvain Sylvain doubling on guitar and vocals; couple ex Joan Jett sidemen on rhythm instruments. Some surf, some quasi AC/DC, some poppish hard-rockish punk, four songs in 15 minutes, sounds promising but after a dozen or so listens I gotta say none of it is actually sticking to my gills. Anybody wanna convince me it's better than that?

http://www.myspace.com/batusis

(Er, "brings (it) up a lot" might be an overstatement; I've heard him bring it twice, maybe. But given how erratically I actually happen to tune into that station while punching buttons in the car -- yeah, I've got the conspriacy theorists on pre-set now, it's like gawking at a car wreck -- I bet he does mention it fairly often.)

The jew-hate thing was around in the Lehigh Valley. You could come upon it any place in Pennsy's
interior. Some of the Pennsylvania Dutch harbor it, unsurprisingly. It wasn't everywhere in Pine Grove but it was also not exceedingly rare.

As to where they come up with this cockamamie stuff -- you can wade through Poker Face's site, or Paul Topete's quotes for hours, he's certainly not shy with them EXCEPT when talking to the local newspaper, as I showed today. And there's no logic to anything he spouts. It's just a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories, references to books and newsletters no one in their right mind would read or give credence to, paranoia, anger at the government. These people are upside down on everything but there's no talking with them. Whatever broke them, they're permanently screwed up. Enlightening reason doesn't work. It's just more evidence to fuel their fires.

What's new is that now the gentler side of it is mainstream. Glenn Beck is, by any definition, a profoundly screwed up John Bircher. John Birchers -used- to be viewed with extreme disdain in this country. I watch him for a few minutes each week and can't find anything logical or well reasoned from him ever. So the even more extreme elements see this and it encourages them to be more vocal and active which is why Poker Face was always interested in doing political shows for Ron Paul and the Tea Party.

It's like in the movie Falling Down, where the Mike Douglas character walks into a military paraphernalia store, and the neo-Nazi running it rushes to congratulate him and say, hey man, you're one of us, and then goes to show him his prize possession, an empty canister from a concentration camp gas chamber.
And then the Mike Douglas character expresses shock and they get into a fight in which he kills the neo-Nazi.

So did anybody know that the Gap Band covered a song by Free, "Little Bit Of Love," on their debut LP in 1977? Me neither. Thing is, if there was ever much hard rock in the Free version (I'd have to go back and check), the Gap guys drain it all out; their version is more like a pop reggae ballad, with a slight Latin lilt. Still makes me wonder whether they had hopes for a rock audience -- back cover shows two long-haired white guys in the band along with the five black guys (hilariously, on the inner sleeve the only white guy there has his hair pulled back to resemble an Afro, and is jumping around in funky clothes); Leon Russell plays piano on one track; and they were kind of a funk throwback in '77, half-competently aiming for Sly and Stevie overall, pretty much ignoring disco except for in "Hang On (To Yourself)," which oddly might be the catchiest cut on the album. Which really isn't all that good; they actually whomped a lot harder when they got less purist in the early '80s, in the big hits "Early In The Morning" and "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" and especially smaller hit "Burn Rubber On Me." Bet more rock fans bought those too. (Not sure about country fans, though they were from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and wore cowboy hats sometimes, so maybe.)

To answer your question, yes -- there was some hard rock in the Free tune.

BTW, did you ever get around to listening to the 'new' Uriah Heep rehash CD, Celebration? I saw it in the store today.

i can't believe how much i have enjoyed listening to motley crue's too fast for love album today. what a great record. haven't heard it in a zillion years.

Boy, the new Hendrix record seems to have gone over like a lead balloon. I read Tuscaloosa Ann's review of it in the LA Times a few weeks back. Since she liked it, I figured it must have been fairly skippable.

I listened to that new Heep album once; sounded good, but haven't been able to convince myself there's a point to it. Think I'm waiting for somebody else to do A/B comparisons with old versions. Who knows, maybe some songs are better than before. Will try to put it on again soon, but can't promise I'll have anything more enlightening to say about it.

I was kinda shocked myself that the Hendrix estate wasn't able to get a Rolling Stone cover out of that compilation. I'm sure they got a Guitar Player cover story, though.

Even more likely Guitar World, too.

god, I have no interest in this new Uriah Heep thing, even though I defy anyone on ILX to be a better fan than me of the original group.

in the sense that: my fave rhythm duo of all time is Lee Kerslake on drums and Gary Thain on bass.

^^^^ right there, those two, favorite rhythm sections of all time

I actually thought this was AMAZING:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se4YjAV4CZA

i was poking around, looking at latter day Heep vids, and this rocked me pretty good.

helps that Hensley was guesting :) but still, this totally rocks

actually it's: Kerslake/Thain, Shirley/Ridley, Jones/Bonham

Kerslake/Thain, Shirley/Ridley, Jones/Bonham

You sure that's it? Ridley's dead. It looks more like Trevor Bolder, ex-Spider, who has been a Heep member way longer than Gary Thain or even when the former was with Bowie. It basically looks like the current Heep line-up, which is only Box and Bolder as the 'old' members. I'd almost say Ken Hensley on keys but I think he generally played almost all the slide on the old Heep numbers, and I saw them
a lot.

Anyway, you're right. Definitely lacks nothing on the original.

Following the 1976 replacement of vocalist David Byron (with John Lawton - formerly of bands Lucifer's Friend and The Les Humphries Singers), Uriah Heep turned away from fantasy-oriented lyrics and multi-part compositions back toward a more straightforward hard rock sound typical of the era. In 1977 they scored a top 40 chart hit in Australia with "Free Me" which went all the way to #1 in New Zealand

This part of the 'history' from Wiki makes me laugh because it's so classically bad. Um, no.

Manage to mention 'the les humphries singers' -- utterly worthless german version of a k-tel mimic band -- probably because Metal Mike Saunders spent time promoting them.

So the Wiki bio completely overlooks which Heep albums and tunes made big impressions.

The 'worm' debut -- Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble'[i] in the UK, infamously reviewed by Saunders'
girlfriend Melissa Mills, [i]Look at Yourself, Demons & Wizards[i], [i]The Magician's Birthday[i], and [i]Live. Secondarily Wonderworld and Return to Fantasy, which was awful and is now mostly out of print.

I saw at least three of the tours for these records.

You haveta laff. The very idea that 'the les humphries singers' were any good neatly defines the word -- ludicrous.

Kerslake/Thain, Shirley/Ridley, Jones/Bonham.

You sure that's it? Ridley's dead.

Gorge, I understand about Ridley. comment was more of an "all-time" thing. whole point is: in MY estimation, the original Shirley/Ridgely and Kerslake/Thain sections are the two greatest British rhythm beasts of all time. Put in Appice/Bogart for America, i guess, I'm talking hairy rip-ass thud rhythm sections.

the kid in the video I posted does a good David Byron

I'm talking hairy rip-ass thud rhythm sections.

Ah, point taken.

Had to happen eventually, I guess; from a NYTimes piece today about Rand Paul, Ron's son, Libertarian-leaning, Tea Party-backed candidate for the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Kentucky:

He quotes Thomas Paine as well as the rock band Rush: “Glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.” The prizes, Dr. Paul told an audience outside Ol’ Harvey’s Eats in Lawrenceburg, are the pork barrel projects politicians bring home even though there is no money to pay for them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/us/politics/11kentucky.html

Rand?! The kid's name is Rand!? How much you want to bet he has another son named Roark...

Plan to get it today or sometime this week:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/04/13/jesus-loves-the-stooges/

Haw ... poster for the Georgia Peaches Stooges show at Richards lists Hydra as the opening act.

I have a hard time imagining Hydra onstage with the Stooges. Hydra was about a year away from their debut on Capricorn. They probably thought they were good next to the Stooges who were ending.

On the live extra, for the beginning, I'm hearing Williamson's track cutting in and out jaggedly, although he's also in the room mix from blowing down the vocal mike. But that's really here nor there when it comes to Stooges live recordings. Best recording of Ron Asheton on bass I've heard, though. Lots of piano from Thurston which gives the band an entirely different sound than was on Raw Power.

Piano goes away for a lot of the next tune, the guitar finally sounds right on "Gimme Danger." Which is, incidentally, great. "Search & Destroy" does not benefit from Scott Thurston's 'rollicking' barroom
piano.

Mix-wise Asheton's bass is right in the same sonic range as Williamson when he's playing rhythm, so they panned Williamson to one side, Asheton to the other. "I Need Somebody" is good, sinister, crunching and bluesy. Won't spoil the dirty poem that intros it for you.

Sounds like there was a crowd of about a dozen.

"Cock in My Pocket" delivers what you wanted. One of the Stooges rampagingly more conventional
beats, worked off a classic rock n' roll guitar figure.

"Doojiman" which I'd never heard before. Good jungle beat, good chopping rhythm workout by Williamson
-- this would have made people laugh had it been on the original album. Which was probably not the desired effect and why it was left off.

And there you have it, pretty much.

Come to think of it, Columbia was probably appalled by "Doojiman." As if they weren't already unenthusiastic enough about the Stooges in 73.

If you wanted to know what Uriah Heep's Celebration redo is like, it's definitely an opportunity taken to sneak in a couple new tunes, the first of which hews mostly to old <strike>Uriah Heep</strike> Boston style.

This is Mick Box's band, though. And the better part of it, so far, is the two songs from Salisbury, Heep's second one from the classic line-up fans like least. But the US version had "Lady in Black" and "Bird of Prey," that latter particularly excellent, here. Bernie Shaw, who sings, sounds almost exactly like Dave Byron did on the original, sans the vocal exclamation that sounded like a silly laugh. And the song is supercharged a bit. In fact, Shaw's been in the band longer than Dave Byron was.

They take two from John Lawton-era Heep -- the Innocent Victim album, which I still have a copy of, "Free Me" and "Free & Easy." The first was said to chart somewhere, the latter was an attempt to do "Easy Livin'" again, down to a copycat similar intro.

The best things are done really fast and electric. "Free & Easy" which was barely mediocre originally. "Look at Yourself," (I would've added "Love Machine"), "Easy Livin," "Bird of Prey" and there's also a letter perfect copy of "Lady in Black," as said, probably because it was a hit in Germany.

There's also a selection from "Sonic Origami," of which I once said:

[i]"Only the young stay young," bleat Uriah Heep on Sonic Origami, the first American-released "new" CD (technically it's a year and a half old, at least in Japan) by the Mortimer Snerds of heavy metal in, oh, about five years ... It is particularly depressing, then, to report that Sonic Origami bites the root, even if you cut Heep a generous amount of slack for maturity, evolving taste, and loss or gain (depending upon your point of view) of personnel. That inane "Only the young stay young" line would've worked splendidly on anything from Look at Yourselfin 1970. But when glued on top of '90s-style white metal—sunny no-traction AOR suitable for play on the "Z" channel—it's awful. Mick Box sounds like Buck Dharma or Trevor Rabin or anyone with a few too many studio racks of equipment and the time to twiddle ... Plans for a Heep fall U.S. tour timed to coincide with the release of Sonic Origami collapsed."

No opinion change, that's only part of it. Surprisingly, it went on for two pages.

If you want to see a visual comparison of the original CD mix of Raw Power and the new Legacy edition. Plus a little on what it means.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/04/16/raw-power-a-look-at-now-and-then/

Don't know if this is old news for you guys, but here's Slash ft. Fergie & Cypress Hill "Paradise City." Jonathan Bogart thinks Fergie kicks Axl's ass seven ways to Sunday here, and that "I now feel to the original as most people my age feel about Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way' - perfectly fine, but really just a prelude to the version with the shouty hip-hop dudes on it." "Paradise City" was always my least favorite track on side one of "Appetite For Destruction" anyway, so I don't have much at stake in the issue; think he's wrong about Fergie (sounds a lot like Axl, imo) but might be right about the shouty dudes. Slash isn't so bad either.

"bugglink1922 fergie sounds more like a man than Axl does."

Haven't heard the Slash album. Probably won't for a while; I still haven't gotten around to the Slash's Snakepit album from 199whenever.

"FREE ME"..."said to chart somewhere" ...christ yeah, MASSIVE hit in NZ, was it not elsewhere?

god i usedta hate uriah heep, that song was a big part of the reason why...it's prob'ly still their best known song in this country, at least if yr about my age...hell & the NZer guy who was in the band had been dead a couple years by then too, right?

perfectly fine, but really just a prelude to the version with the shouty hip-hop
dudes on it."

In other words, trot out even more old boring cliches and pile them on top until it's an even bigger glob of ABC gum. No thanks. It's nice to know hip-hop dudes are just as down with phoned-in
performances as white people.

Guitar World had a big cover feature on Slash and I bought hoping it might whet my desire for the record. No surprise, you can talk to Slash for pages and pages but he's really not got much of a thought in his head, just rolling through life. He tells us all he'd scheduled a session with Steve Lukather and then forgot to get out of bed for the day, or until Lukather called him up late. And then there's the bit about Slash's famous guitar and amp for Appetite and how Marshall is making an amp to get that sound and Gibson is making a premium Slash guitar that's the same as the guitar Slash used and Epiphone is having a cheaper one made in China so US underemployed punters can almost sort of afford one at Guitar Center. And then there were the pages and pages and pages of ads for Slash guitar picks, and strings, and guitars and everything but his underwear, with a picture of him in every ad. And I tell ya, any self-respecting person who saw a magazine like that with all their pictures and that kind of stuff in it would want to hide.

So much for interest in the Slash album. Good case for a story on how being grindingly mediocre
but coincidentally in the right place at the right time and making the best of what you have when given the opp not infrequently mints you for the rest of time.

The only thing interesting was that Slash does his demos with no vocals and a drum machine, something I'd almost be curious to hear before he went and sent digital files to a dozen singers. Not sending them to singers though would probably have taken more effort and thought.

re Uriah Heep and "Free Me." Yeah, must have been down Anzac way because it sure wasn't here. At least I don't remember it on radio and my brother and I listened to the album a lot so I knew what it
sounded like. I had tricked myself into liking it more than it actually warranted.

And, yep, Thain had been dead for awhile -- four albums back I think.

I guess when you get right down to it Slash actually is as lazy as he's always looked.

More Poker Face funnies and how to write the most self-damaging press release you can:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/04/18/public-relations-funnies-with-poker-face/

Man, Poker Face should get their own reality show; it's getting pretty hilarious how they keep digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes.

Anyway, here's my Ratt-new-album review, from Rhapsody:

http://www.rhapsody.com/ratt/infestation#albumreview

Melodic metal album I might like even more this year, by the way, is Festival by Jon Oliva's Pain on AFM Records, Oliva apparently being the "former co-founder and frontman" (if you're a co-founder, aren't you a co-founder for life, though?) of Savatage, who I've never paid attention to at all. Just super listenable, tuneful, somewhat ornate hard rock bordering on power metal. Fave: "Death Rides A Black Horse."

And now debut LPs by two British hard rock bands from the decade of new wave, except the one who wore all skinny ties weren't actually trying to be new wave, I don't think. That'd be Godfathers, from London, who I think were more trying to look like Mafia wiseguys or pall-bearers or something. Album is Birth School Work Death, Epic 1988, Vic Maile produced; title track and lead cut was, I thought, a hit in the States, but turns out it never even went Top 100; guess it just got AOR and/or MTV play or something. (I thought it might've scored in the singles poll in Pazz & Jop, too, but nope.) Pretty great song, either way; cynically shouted-out circle-of-life lyrics (depicted in working class Catholic manner on the LP cover) and a sound like a poppier Screaming Blue Messiahs -- whose first album maybe rocked harder than the Godfathers one, but I don't think their second one did. Album from there is solid, plenty of stomping, especially starting with "When Am I Coming Down" at the end of Side One; that one (a drug song maybe?) and "Obsession" have the most psychedelic twin-guitar soaring, out of the Byrds and Yardbirds. Second Side goes: Give 'Em Enough Rope-style shouty punk rocker, snotty Electric Prunes/Chocolate Watchband-style outcast greaser-psych thing, hard Stones/Georgia Satellites-style slide-blues rocker, then a passable ballad with maybe a little Lou Reed in its melody, then "Obsession"'s mean psych, then some hard powerpop. Lots of tough modes, in other words, none of which are signaled at all by the packaging or how the band present themselves. Went #91 in the U.S., and I totally ignored it at the time; think I associated them with commerical "modern rock" radio, which I had no use for. Had to be one of the last good Brit hard rock bands to chart Stateside at all.

Headboys' self-titled, which I've been loving even more, came out nine years earlier, 1979, on RSO, the Bee Gees' label. (Also Suzi Quatro's and the Rockets' by then; I assume they had other rock bands, but Bee Gees were obviously their bread and butter.) Went to #113 in the States and the single and lead track "Shape Of Things To Come" went to #87 -- Not to be confused with the Yardbirds classic, and the second track "Stepping Stones" is not to be confused with the Monkees classic, though I get the idea they're begging the question, and they're both pretty great -- somewhere between herky-jerky Carsy keyboarded new wave and poppy hard guitar rock ("Stepping Stone"'s concise AOR could almost be a darker version of 38 Special a few years later.) "My Favorite DJ" sounds like XTC's Drums And Wires as loud rock, and then "Kickin The Kans" is even better, fuzzbucket CCR "Green River" swamp guitar in a super-catchy suburban bandwagon pogo context. Side ends with a semi dirge called "Silver Lining" with Aerosmith "Dream On" funeral piano and a fiddle credited to somebody from Celtic folk band Boys Of the Lough. Overall, lots of me-and-the-boys songwriting. Wiki says Headboys were from Scotland, and their producer Peter Ker also worked with the Motors of Bram Tchaikovksy, which explains something. They only made one album; keyboardist went on to produce wimpier Limeys like Blue Nile.