Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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

Wait, were Starbuck actually ever hard rock??

Was listening to the first, self-titled Michael Stanley LP from 1973 on Denver-based Tumbleweed Records last week; have played it a couple times now, and I like it, but even despite the presence of Joe Walsh (most notably on the great "Rosewood Bitters," also feat. Todd Rundgren on clavinette) and "Rock and Roll Man" (which Joe arranged), I'd still call it more a "Gordon Lightfoot style folk" than rock album. Weird how Stanley actually sings the lyrics of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (LP's final track) instead of rapping them in rhythm like Dylan; don't actually think the song works that way, but it's interesting.

Also, though I need to listen to them all more (and the Rods one isn't totally bad per se'), I can now conclusively report beyond a shadow of a doubt that Yesterday and Today's aforementioned debut LP is a hell of a lot better than the Rods' Wild Dogs from 1982. Also, if you wondered, Babe Ruth's Kids Stuff and the Sparks' Propaganda are both more rocking than you might think they are.

aw, i like the rods.

so i got this mike heron album that i've never heard cuz i am a fan of everything incredible string band and it's got some real rocking on it! lots of electric guitar action. it's funny cuz the dealer at the record show who i bought it from had it in his metal section. guess he thought HERON were an obscure nwobhm band.

http://991.com/newGallery/Mike-Heron-Diamond-Of-Dreams-331070.jpg

chuck, i think you'd really like this album by The Other Side on De-Lite. Starts out with a southern rock disco cowbell cover of "lies" by the knickerbockers. second song is a peppy rocker with great two guitar action. third song "gotta get to you" has great hard rock riff + disco flute! closing track on side one has the promising title of "ghengis chicken", but it turns out to be a sort of corny henhouse country joke number. how much you like it would depend on how much you like rock bands doing "country". even southern rock bands.
second side opens with a fat break beat and skynyrd guitar. this whole album SOUNDS really good. every southern rock band should have recorded their albums in a disco studio in philly. (i don't even know where these guys were from. but they've got the twang and the guitars.) the next song "day dream" is a serious prog disco treat. great mix of percussion, synth, organ, and those duelling guitars. it's got the mexican beat a la babe ruth. epic power ballad "dead or alive" is next. the only skippable number, really. it was made with stadium cig lighters in mind, but i don't know if these guys ever got out of the bars. last song is "rock x-ing" and its a decent rave-up with handclap beats and AGAIN the great guitars, but the song itself is only fair to middling. but its short. and before you know it, the album's over.

really loving the dirty tricks album i got too. their third and last. produced by tony visconti. apparently the band tried out for ozzy after he left sabbath the first time. this album is just wall to wall guitar goodness. you can hear the nwobhm coming around the corner on this thing too.

I will probably die some day still confusing Dirty Tricks with Dirty Looks (who I realize they probably don't have very much in common with.)

Will keep an eye out for them, though, and for The Other Side; thanks for the tip, Scott. (Probably not within my budget, but you never know.)

as far as overall expiry thread appeal goes, i think everyone here would dig the dirty tricks album. even crazy phil.

A friend passed on a couple Steve Morse Band albums on a thumb drive. The one I've listened to is Out Standing in the Field from late 2009.

Lots of power riffage, moreso even than the Dixie Dregs debut back in the Seventies. Lotsa jazz fusion thrown into same, all instro so far, "Name Dropping" is the kick off track and the most might. "Relentless Encroachment" is similar. "Flight of the Osprey" is Euro power metal with all the pretty stuff but not the singer included. "John Deere Letter" made me laugh briefly being Morse's country hoedown licks into superplayer style. Solid B if you like the subject matter. If you really really like it, an A. C if you've no use for solo instro chops heavy for the sake of chops guitar heroism by Marvel superhero-like musos.

I just happen to have the answer to this question:

chuck, i think you'd really like this album by The Other Side on De-Lite. Starts out with a southern rock disco cowbell cover of "lies" by the knickerbockers. second song is a peppy rocker with great two guitar action. third song "gotta get to you" has great hard rock riff + disco flute! closing track on side one has the promising title of "ghengis chicken", but it turns out to be a sort of corny henhouse country joke number. how much you like it would depend on how much you like rock bands doing "country". even southern rock bands.
second side opens with a fat break beat and skynyrd guitar. this whole album SOUNDS really good. every southern rock band should have recorded their albums in a disco studio in philly. (i don't even know where these guys were from. but they've got the twang and the guitars.)

They were from Minersville, in Schuylkill County, PA, where I grew up. I saw them many times.

I wrote about them here a year or so ago:

ttp://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2007/12/sludge-in-70s-other-side-minersvilles.html

And they were on a label financed by profits from Kool & the Gang.

Aghh. Now let's get that link working.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2007/12/sludge-in-70s-other-side-minersvilles.html

well, there you go, they were from pennsyltucky all along! nice. i did time in wilkes-barre for a year. felt like a century. sometimes i forget that it ever happened.

I actually saw them perform "Genghis Chicken" many times. The drunk girls and guys at the shows at the Pottsville bowling alley always liked it a lot.

pottsville! man, you are bringing me back. i spent a year in hazleton one night.

you are making me hungry for pierogies too.

Then you are quite familiar with coal piles and cinders as country-living beautification, too.

the thing i remember most about living in wilke-barre in the late 80's was the truly amazing number of building fires. every news broadcast would lead with a fire story. also, apparently, after reagan closed down some state mental hospitals, lots of the former patients moved to wilkes-barre. or were moved to wilkes-barre. apparently. and they would wander around the town square and streets all day long. i didn't have a lot of fun there. i was lonely and felt completely lost at sea. my parents made me go to school there. that's why i was there. did a year, went home for the summer, and then moved to philly at the age of 19. the rest is history.

Ha ha

NEW RINGGOLD, Pa. – Hey, didja hear the news? Beyonce and Jay-Z are moving to Schuylkill County, Pa.!
That's the rumor swirling around these parts: That the singer and her rap mogul husband, Grammy Award winners both, are planning to buy a multimillion-dollar spread on 210 secluded acres in eastern Pennsylvania.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100430/ap_en_ot/us_beyonce_s_rumored_move

It's also convenient — just over two hours west of Manhattan by stretch limo, even closer by helicopter or private plane.

This is stupid, bad and wrong. Unless you're going well over 120 mph and expect zero traffic,
Schuylkill Co. is certainly not two hours 'west' of Manhattan. Make that five easy, considering
the traffic on the route you'll have to take.

It'd make a good sitcom, though: Beyonce in Old Slovenly Whiteville. Sending servants to the supermarket'd be a laugh riot. They would doubtless be disturbed by the alarming lack of quality restaurants and good takeout.

Better have a romantic attitude about snow, ice and salt on the roads, too. And if you're a wine drinker, forget it, unless you like the box varietals. You'll have to bring it in with your own shipping line.

http://dickdestiny.com/pennsyltuckyvotersmall.JPG

What's that you say, sonny? Someone named Jay Tee's comin' here?! You have to speak up, Ima little
deef.