Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

(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.

this is still one of my favorite rock albums of the 80's. i never stopped listening to it since i got it in 1986 or around there. not a proper album, singles and stuff...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hUbjyM_iV5A/St4btkMRlgI/AAAAAAAAC0Y/VgX4JO90BxY/s400/THE+GODFATHERS+PORTADA.jpg

xp Actually, just checked Wiki; apparently Godfathers had an earlier collection of singles called Hit By Hit, and they evolved out of the Sid Presley Experience, who I heard of but never heard. In the '00s a couple guys in the group started a band called the Germans with Rat Scabies from the Damned; and " lead guitarist Kris Dollimore is active on the British blues scene in London and the South East purveying his so-called 'Medway Delta' blues." Wiki entry also claims the Godfathers foreshadowed '90s Brit-pop, but I can't think of any that rocks as hard.

Also, Headboys' "Shape Of Things..." went to #67 in the U.S., not #87.

and then there are people who only love sid presley experience stuff. there are lots of them.

x-posts all around

i knew you would love that headboys album, chuck. totally underrated. or underheard.

Just super listenable, tuneful, somewhat ornate hard rock bordering on power metal. Fave: "Death Rides A Black Horse

Pretty much describes Savatage's major label records, too.

i loved that john oliva album from a couple years back. really good.

the sid presley stuff before the godfathers is really throwback mod/garage stuff and i always thought it sounded really good. the godfathers were definitely a band that made me want to listen to MORE garage rock/60's stuff back in the 80's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLOp8cE5zEw&feature=related

Man, second side of that Headboys LP is as good as the first side, maybe even better! Starts with "Experiments," the kind of robotic science-lab clink-clink-clank rhythms Thomas Dolby would be tinking with a few years later (actually the beat reminds me of "Let's Go All the Way" by Sly Fox) except done as fast loud rock (my college radio station played that one a lot I think); then a "2-4-6-8 Motorway" style music hall pub stomper getting pervy about "Schoolgirls," then the album's longest cut (just 4:11, most everything else being in the three-minute range) with Lou Lewis's best guitar solo, then a total speedy snappy ringer for 1979 Boomtown Rats (or maybe those two were the other way around -- doing this from memory; my wife hears Phil Lynott in Lewis's singing but I hear Bob Geldof), then a snide Jack The Ripper tune. I never stop being amazed by how many really good LPs like this were coming out around '79/'80, just from regular old bar-band rockers figuring they could cash in on new wave, knowing how to play but now speeding up the tempos and making hooks and beats wacky for the kids.

Speaking of wacky, this only peripherally hard rock I guess (so don't read it if that bugs you), but I found this 2-disc vinyl TV-mailaway novlety-song sampler from 1978 called Goofy Gold last month; Ronco and K-Tel sold similar comps (Goofy Greats and Funny Bone Favorites respectively) with a good deal of overlap, but this one is on HRB Music, which I know nothing about, and looks extremely cut-rate: the LP cover is really cheap cardboard, and there's basically no spine, so I'm not sure how legit it was. Anyway, song selection is the usually suspects, almost all great -- "Monster Mash," "Purple People Eater," "Wooly Bully," "Alley Oop," "Ahab The Arab," "Hello Muddah Hello Faddah," etc. A couple surprises ("Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus and "Beep Beep" by the Playmates rule!), but the only one I'd never heard or heard of before is this song called "King Kong (Your Song)," by Pickett and Ferrara. Turns out it came out in 1976, never charted, and Pickett is the same Boris Pickett who did "Monster Mash." But basically, from the thick opening Funkadlic-style post-Hendrix guitar on down, it's a ripoff of Jimmy Castor Bunch's "King Kong - Pt. 1," which went #69 pop (and #23 r&b) the year before, in '75. Except Pickett and Ferrara use silly foreign accents, presumably mirroring the movie. (There's a clip on youtube that sets the song to actual Kong clips.) Google search says the Pickett B-side was "Disco Kong"!

Playing Yesterday & Today's debut album from 1976 today. Wow, they sounded really metal already. They were totally ahead the game.

Ha ha, the Headboys' LP cover credits "the drunken yobs chorus on 'Schoolgirls'" to "Greg, Pete, Duncan, Bobette and some mysterious person who walked off the street." Also reminds me that there's a sax (played by a 300-year-old man, allegedly) on closing cut "Take It All Down," plus "stepping down the street" sounds in "Kickin The Kans."

(Typos: Dolby was "tinkling" not "tinking"; novelty comp has "usual suspects" not "usually suspects"; also I left out an "is" somewhere.)

Yeah, Yesterday & Today arrived armed and ready. London, however, apparently didn't know how to promote them even though they were managed by Bill Graham. There's a little drop off on the second album. Then the name change to Y&T for Earthshaker which was about as good as the first though lacking anything like "Alcohol" which, seems to me, should have been a frat party singalong hit nationwide.

got some great stuff at the record show in amherst.

loving this:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00013TBQK.jpg

the only rock band on the de-lite label? southern band with some funky disco moves:

http://www.vinylwhizrecords.com/data/vinylwhiz/_/70726f647563742f353734353633626235372e6a70670032353000.png

not so hot on first listen, but i'll try it sober:

http://dreamchimney.com/slvs/starbuck_20060815083631.jpg

finally got a nice clean copy of hooked by the hook. love this band. they were definitely a harbinger of the 70's hard rock onslaught to come. ilxor chaki's father was the bass player.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uypEFQ3_Vu8/S6AlttYQd0I/AAAAAAAAGEw/3j4C06C-Zn4/s320/Untitled.jpg

and THIS record. man, this record SMOKES! for real. it rocks so damn hard. there are serious guitar solos on this thing. hell, i think i'll play it again right now.

http://www.ohrwaschl.de/shop/ProductImages/diamond%20reo%20dirty.jpg