Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

ah ok, so "Slow Train" is some sort of unfinished sketch for a future song which never materialized

BUT, "Freedom" is a completed song .. the full Purple band in full fucking flight!!!

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

holy FUCK am I psyched about this. unbelievable. a new Purple track to rock

I know i've mentioned it tons of times on ILM, but Ian Paice is my favorite rock drummer of all time. for real. I place him above Bonham for the jazziness and versatility he brings to the table. just love listening to the guy

are they on some 'Fireball' remaster or something??

The 25th Anniversary remaster to be exact.

xp Eh, I have nothing against Phil as a critic -- he just has way different ears than most people I know. (But then again, so do I.)

Anyway, the email from Metal Mike was a little cryptic, but yeah, off an archival CD. Here's what he asked Jonathan Hall of onetime rocking Man's Ruin etc. band Backbiter (ccing lots of other people):

do you have this CD? (kevin claimed the 9 euro new truckstop copy from germany)
when i xeroxed the booklet for myself (to stuff into the last DP album i own, a beat up $1 bin copy of Who Do You Think We Are) i made a second copy (pages enlarged by 175% to fill up one 8x11 page per booklet page), lemme know if you need before it gets buried by six other types of incoming/outgoing paperwork

Fwiw, Jonathan had it, but also said this (ccing everybody too):

We did Strange Kind of Woman in the Deep Purple cover band we did.

Kind of related story involving Dio: Backbiter won the LA Weekly Music Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Band (beating out Queens of the Stone Age, Orgy and System of a Down by the way). Ronnie James Dio and Mike Watt handed us the award. Earlier in the evening our friend, Deep Purple Dave, was talking with his hero Dio. They were both dressed in stone washed looking jeans, cowboy boots, a blazer and poodle hair. Earlier, Marea had said something to the effect of “Have you ever noticed that metal people think they’re the coolest and everyone else is weird?”. Minutes later, Dave came up to our table all excited telling us that he was chatting with Dio. He said “Ronnie said to me ‘Do you notice that we’re the only normal looking people here’”. We all died laughing.

And scrolling back a little, I'd actually say people at my high school were into Styx and BTO as much as REO. BTO iirc huge in Detroit my freshman year, 1974. And junior or senior year some doofus hero grafitied "WELCOME TO THE GRAND ILLUSION" in huge letters across the front of the school, for all to see when arriving in the morning. (Eighth Grade, Our Lady Of Refuge 1973-74, was all about Alice Cooper though. Except maybe for John Gallo, who wore a T. Rex T shirt once.)

So, I revived a dead thread about him last week to mention this, but since today's such an active Past Expiry Hard Rock day might as well mention it here too: Was total Boomtown Rats/Thin Lizzy dead-boys-on-the-street cooker "Only One" off Picture This (1982, LP before Sports) Huey Lewis's hardest rocking track ever? Or is there one I missed, like maybe off the News's allegedly new wavey '80 debut LP?

Aaaaaaand......Also been playing Aerosmith's Rock In A Hard Place a bunch since picking up a dollar copy a few weeks ago; never really paid attention to it before. And I'd say I've now played it enough to state conclusively that nothing else on it comes close to "Lightning Strikes" (which is actually better, and swings a lot harder, than I'd remembered.) Album's sound is definitely still harder and rougher than what they've done post-comeback, obviously, but it also just really lacks the indelible tunes of their '70s stuff. Also, obviously, Dufay and Crespo aren't Perry and Whitford; have a feeling one reason "Lighting Strikes" pulls off the funk of old is because Whitford's still playing rhythm guitar on it. (Only cut he's credited on.) Guess my #2 cut would be leadoff "Jailbait" just because it's so fast, but they'd kicked speed harder before. Some of the structures are definitely not simplistic (esp in the weirdly named because not jazzy "Bitches Brew" and the kind of interminable seven-minute-with-its-prelude violin-pomp extravaganza "Joanie's Butterfly"); "Rock In A Hard Place (Cheshire Cat)" and the sorta jive-talky "Bolivian Ragamuffin" (title a la "Bohemian Rhapsody"???) hint at getting a groove going but don't really stay deep in the pocket somehow. And the side closers, a power ballad cover of Julie London's "Cry Me A River" (had no idea they ever did that tbh) and this sort of brothel piano bar falsetto quasi-jazz diddybop thing "Push Comes To Shove," basically just hint at Tyler's future in torch-schmaltz, near as I can tell. (Don't think I ever really loved Aerosmith cover versions after "Walking The Dog" and "Train Kept A Rollin'," to be honest; always thought their Beatles and Shangri-Las ones were just fillerbusters. Honestly can't remember if "Mother Popcorn" or "Milk Cow Blues" were any good.) Anyway, anybody who's heard this record, am I missing anything on it? I don't think so.

As for John Leland (mentioned by George a few posts up), I'd noticed he had something on Page One above the Times fold a few days ago -- about abortion laws widely getting more restrictive a state level, if I remember right? -- but I didn't get far into it. Hadn't seen his byline in a while before that. Wonder whether they shuffled him, somehow.

don't remember much about it. done with mirrors is the one everyone will tell you is the underrated album. i like that one too. when was the last time i heard night in the ruts!? don't even think i have a copy.

I have everything up through Night in the Ruts in my iPod, including Live Bootleg, which I never ever listen to. I remember seeing a video for "Lightning Strikes" on MTV about 30 years ago, but never heard the rest of the album. Or any album afterward. Singles, obviously, sure.

"Tiger Feet" (the latter also revived in the late '80s by Girlschool): Music for
10 year olds, sure

Nothing beats their dancing performance on tv of it. So I presume it was eminently popular with girls.

Pat Smear WOULD have been kind of silly to criticize the Nuge on his "downstrokes" tho, no?

Downstrokes or upstrokes, in the context of this thread, certainly.

Since revisiting Deep Purple, it's fair to condemn the young Saunders' judgment of Who Do We Think We Are. Blackmore is in his prime and he wants to go solo. So there's friction and it turns in one of DP's best songs, "Smooth Dancer," in which Ian Gillan writes lyrics about Blackmore as a prima donna and Blackmore's guitar furnishes the perfect foil. These guys realize the things that are driving them apart are what makes Deep Purple great and there's this grudging admiration for each other throughout the song. Which works even if you don't get the lyrics or the back story.

And "Mary Long," which is Ian Gillan's sneer at Mary Whitehouse, a famous English school marmish
cutlure warrior, against everything kids liked, the kind of person -- in the USA -- spawned universities like Baylor and movies like "Footloose."

One of my favorite Deep Purple albums. Coming right before Burn and Deep Purple's hard left turn into dumb blues rock and bad funk, American styles Blackmore couldn't make exciting -- and neither could the replacements. Except for two cuts, "Burn" and "Lay Down Stay Down."

Which never quite explained to me why Roger Glover got kicked out but both he and Blackmore turned in almost an entire live double album of dreary but fair to awful blooz hard rock on the first Rainbow live album.

Was total Boomtown Rats/Thin Lizzy dead-boys-on-the-street cooker "Only One" off Picture This (1982, LP before Sports) Huey Lewis's hardest rocking track ever?

Can't even remotely bring this up my mind. Lewis had hard rock in him, it just didn't earn him any money.

This goes back to Clover records. I remember seeing one in large quantity in cut out bins.

From Wikie, and I'm too tired to dig out Live and Dangerous right now to determine if it's real or "henfap."

Under the name "Huey Harp" Huey Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy's 1978 landmark album Live and Dangerous.

Has anyone heard Tom Petty's homage to Physical-Graffiti-era Zeppelin from his new record? It's come up twice on the radio. Lots of riffing, fancy chordings and time signatures. There's even a Billy Squire-eqsue double-time part at the end. Not sure I love the vocals, and I'm not sure it's going to stick with me as a song, but as an exercise it's well done. Either they got Jimmy Page to do some lead work on it or Mike Campbell is an excellent mimic.

Huey Lewis did play harmonica on Live and Dangerous

"Coming right before Burn and Deep Purple's hard left turn into dumb blues rock and bad funk..."

Man, I think Burn is the best thing Purple ever did.

As a cut, Burn's fairly great. It got 'em a lot of mileage. And the album is certainly a lot better than Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band.

speaking of Styx..is the learned consensus that they never did anything else that rocked harder than "Earl Of Roseland" and "I'm Gonna Make You Feel It" at the end of Styx II?

Actually now thinking "Midnight Ride" on Equinox (last LP w/John Curulewski, pre-Shaw) gets dangerously close to straightforward meat-eating Nugent territory. (And I just checked Popoff, who makes the same comparison.) Honestly didn't realize they had it in them. Other hard-rocking action at the beginning of "Mother Dear," middle of "Suite Madame Blue," and here and there through "Born For Adventure," so I'd count this album as a good one, especially with nostalgic dazed and confused fondness for opening twosome "Light Up"/"Lorelei" worked in.

Stormy asked about early 38 Special above, and I actually don't think I've ever heard the debut, or maybe even anything from their Suvvern Rock period at all besides "Rockin' Into The Night," if that still counts. (That was '80; '77 debut barely charted; '78 followup didn't.) Was enjoying fourth LP Wild Eyed Southern Boys a couple weeks ago though; still some reasonably boogiefied remnants of Skynyrd influence amid the "Fantasy Girl"/"Hold On Loosely" powerpop on that one. LP cover looks really redneck and rapey too, with that girl with the crunk butt cheeks hanging out the sides of her shorts walking toward the bar with six drooling good old boys outside. (Btw, related question, has anybody ever heard the first three Van Zant albums -- one each from the 1985, 1998, and 2001? They must be the only band ever to jump from two albums on CMC International to two top ten country albums -- which are pretty good, definitely Southern rock though not real heavyweight boogie. Wonder if the earlier ones were any heavier.)

"Midnight Ride" and "Suite Madame Blue" were, with the other cuts mentioned, as heavy steak and taters as Styx got.

I recall reading in the booklet in a double CD of .38 Special that they tried really hard to be traditional southern rockers and were quite proud of being like elders Lynyrd Slynyrds onstage. And being totally dismayed, along with the record company, at how abjectly failure the early albums were, saleswise.

So they tried with pop songwriters.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/06/09/samuel-l-jackson-stomp/

BBA, ZZ Top, trash movie fan-ness, etc.

Notes on a pile of stuff I've been listening to lately:

Aerosmith, Done With Mirrors -- hadn't played this in a few years, but listening to Rock In A Hard Place so much last month inspired me to pull it out, and turns out it really was a creative comeback of sorts as well as the last great album they made; just the way superior record of those two, maybe partly because it's almost entirely Perry and the rhythm section's record, all big fat chunky funky boxy boogie riffs -- the songs never get complicated, at all, and there's only eight of them (all under five minutes, half of them under four) so it doesn't wear out its welcome, and I can't think of another Aerosmith album that so fully favors rhythm over melody. Which isn't to say the songs aren't catchy; just that the band's Beatles-pomp side is pretty much nowhere to be found. Also, the two best tracks are the first two -- "Let The Music Do The Talking," which Perry had already done solo of course, and "My Fist Your Face," which has maybe the last great tongue-twisting Tyler ever pulled off. And after that, there's really nothing earthshaking on the record, but it just keeps punching.

Pat Travers Band Crash And Burn from 1980 -- Finally gave in to George's persitent advice and spent a buck on a Travers album; now I'm wondering what took me so long. I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind, I've just assumed I wouldn't like him much -- used to think of him as a one-hit cover-novelty wonder since "Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights)" is the only song I remember ever getting much airplay in Detroit; then figured he was probably just stodgy boogie bore. Probably people including George told me otherwise, but I just wasn't listening. Anyway, I was wrong -- biggest surprise about this record is all the cool, fancy, almost proggy keyboards (played by Travers himself -- synths mostly, sounds like?) that somehow keep it melodic and light on its feet no matter how heavy the boogie guitars get. Lots of side two is space-rockier than I would've guessed, and "Crash And Burn" rules in that dept. That's the opener, and from there side one kills -- "Can't Be Right" (riffing reminds me of "D.O.A.," the VH II song that always reminded me of the Stooges), "Snortin' Whiskey" ("...and drinkin' cocaine": this might have got AOR play, but more likely I remember it from Missouri college radio), "Born Under A Bad Sign" (famous blooze-rock cover, totally earned by that point.) He also covers a Bob Marley song to open side two, which I could take or leave, but which isn't bad. So now I need to start scarfing up all his other old albums, I guess. (Early ones tend to be purer and heavier, right?)

Trigger -- Had always taken these never-charters to be pretty decent faux-Slade (or faux-Kiss, being on Casablanca) shouters, and that's mostly what the first side of their self-titled '78 LP (only one I've ever seen) turns out to be now that I've gone back and checked again. But there are also midtempo powerop semi-ballads on both sides that I'd peg closer to Badfinger or the Raspberries (Popoff says Babys or Piper, fine.) But what really knocked me out this time is the first half of side two, where they seem to be going more for Rocks Aerosmith,
way darker stuff than the mere party rock Popoff kinda dismisses them as, and in "Deadly Weapon" and "Beware Of Strangers" they come dangerously close to pulling it off; later reminds me of the Hounds, too. Jasper/Oliver say they were a Cleveland club band, discovered by Gene Simmons. (Btw, Casabalanca had a pretty good hard rock roster for a disco label, didn't they? Was that mostly Simmons's doing, or whose? Wonder how often Trigger shared bills with the Godz, from Columbus.)

Jerusalem -- Totally fell from these '80s Christian metallers' clearly Thin Lizzy-infused '82 LP when I bought it last year, but only remembered a few weeks ago that I also had their much goofier artworked '83 followup Can't Stop Us Now on my shelf. Must've bought it for the cover at some point, then filed it soon after. '83 album though is sadly not nearly as heavy or majestic as the '82 one: More like Survivor crossed with early Queensryche, with occasional clueless new wavey touches. Passable, or least I'll keep it for the cover, but the only song I really like a lot is the self-expanatory glam-beat bootyshake "Let's Go (Dancin')." Anyway, here's what I wrote about their previous LP last year, followed by the cover of this one:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

http://www.nifty-music.com/images/vinyl/j/jerusalem.1984.6873.jpg

Eh, did I "i" instead of "img" by mistake there? Oh well, either way works.

Anyway, what else?

Most Lizzy-sounding song on Huey Lewis's Sports turns out to be the Viet vet tribute "Walking On A Thin Line," though "The Only One" on the album before still sounded a lot tougher. This is the more solid album, though, and not just 'cause of the four two 10 hits. Hardest popping of those is probably Chapman/Chinn's "Heart And Soul," which the Busboys and Exile had failed to hit with before. But my favorite cuts nobody remembers are "You Crack Me Up," the most nervous new wavey thing on the record, and "Bad Is Bad," which Dave Edmunds had done on Repeat When Necessary better. Also forgot Huey had covered a Hank Williams song -- "Honky Tonk Blues," so if he influenced country singers later, that partly explains it. Anyway, you could probably call this the biggest selling pub rock LP in history, and have a point there.

The Animals Animalism from 1966 -- Another $1 purchase, pretty much all smoldering grumpy blues and soul covers: "Shake," "Lucille," "Smoke Stack Lightning," "Hey Gyp" (okay that's Donovan, whatever), "Hit The Road Jack," etc. But it's the six-minute closer, "Going Down Slow," that makes me wonder whether these guys have kinda got the historical shaft as far as being considered progenitors of heavy blooze rock, because that cut totally does it, and I bet it wasn't the only one. They probably deserved to have an album or two in my metal book more than some bands who did get in there.

Finally, anybody here have any opinion about the Strawbs? I don't, and I've never listened to them much, but I do have a couple albums by them, so finally I'm trying, and seems like they have occasional guitar-rocking moments -- at least in, say, an almost-Jethro Tull sense -- amidst all the pastoral rural prog (which is often real nice itself.)

(Uh, just went to file Travers' Crash And Burn, and saw his Makin' Magic from 1977 there, in the exact same alphabetical order. When the heck did I get that thing? Guess I'll play that pretty soon.)

Also should mention that Trigger's more Slade/Kiss type shout stuff does in fact have some hardy troglodyte glam stomp to it -- especially probably "Rockin' Cross The USA," which you could almost convince yourself came from Australia if it had different geography and if you squint your ears a bit, and "Gimme Your Love," which is not subtle. No complaint about their rhythm section, but their Aerosmith swings harder.

Also, it's probably misleading to keep talking about "boogie" in relation to that 1980 Travers LP; boogie's definitely one big element of it, but the overall sound is just a lot more modern and scientific than that implies. Not just 'cause of his synths -- his guitars, too. The record's just really listenable, not what I was expecting.

anybody here have any opinion about the Strawbs?

I have this 2-CD anthology which I like a lot, especially the early stuff. def more rural-prog than gtr-rocking IIRC. the stately track "Benedictus" got FM airplay in Cincinnati.

http://cover7.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/Large/02/574802.jpg

guessing than Pashmina knows way more about these guys.

Trigger:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2009/06/11/the-thin-line-between-great-and-sub-mediocre/

What do you think of the one singer who sounds like Jackson Browne? (Ref. "Baby Don't Cry")

Yeah, re Pat Travers, Crash & Burn is one of the sellers because of "Snortin' Whiskey," but the ship was about to start sinking. First three albums are better, Makin' Magic is heavier. Start with "Statesboro Blues."

And you should hear his later covers work, the two PT Power Trio CDs and Bazooka. They all smoke. You'd like his version of "Green-Eyed Lady" which he just owns.

I liked a lot of Strawbs. They had Hudson-Ford in the band early and those guys wrote some glammy tunes, one which charted about being a union man or something. Very sing alone, the title escapes as does the album, which I have.

Grave New World's pretty good, too, which is a bit of a concept album sporting a cover most would recognize immediately. A bit bleak but still excellent.

xpAlso just confirmed, for maybe only the first or second time since I wrote the book, that Lord Tracy's weirdo bicoastal sleaze-metal Deaf Gods Of Babylon definitely earned its #308 rating in Stairway To Hell. At least. And most of what I say in the review in the book still rings true, though the Godz comparison might have been stretching things a bit. "Watchadoin'" still sounds like first-album Cheap Trick. Couple things I missed in that review: The other three best non-jokey tracks are probably "Rats Motel" (catchier Crue than most Crue as far as I'm concerned), "Submission" (sounds like a heavier version of the Fools and mentions bisexuals, transexuals, and asexuals), and "King Of The Nighttime Cowboys" (metal rockabilly) if that one counts as a non-joke. Best joke track is "Pirahana," sort of an OTT metal version of Descendents-type hardcore, "about a fish." Fake African ooga-booga jungle chants behind the frat-party rap "3 H.C." are probably not politically correct (though I kind of like that I compared it to the Coasters in the book). And the guitarist ("Jimmy 'R' Russidoff," apparently) steals some tasty Eddie Van Halen moves here and there. In the book I say something about them wearing "striped turbans," but there's no photo anywhere on the album cover, so I'm not sure where I got that from. (Maybe a press photo, though the Stairway review also refers to the record as a "CD," and the copy I have now is on vinyl, so maybe it was in a booklet.) They didn't chart, and Popoff only gives them 5 out of 10 in his metal book, though he likes "Rats Motel" and "Pirahna" (which he also calls "joke OTT"). He underrates it, though. Wiki says they had a couple more albums, but not until starting 15 years later. Last one, '08, was called Porn Again, whatever. And they sem to be based in Texas; uh, maybe that was always the case? The singer, Terry Glaze, used to be in Pantera (an early version, I gather), according to Wiki, so maybe so. Their myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/lordtracy

Also just noticed that Popoff gives all of these Aerosmith albums better scores than the 8 he gives Done With Mirrors: Pump, Livin' On The Edge, Get A Grip and Nine Lives (all 9's and 10's). And Rock In A Hard Place and Permanent Vacation both get 8's, too. He also swears a bunch of their post-comeback tracks sound like '70s Aerosmith, even Rocks, which is not what I remember at all; I remember really antiseptic production that took all the oomph out of the would-be rockers, for one thing. But then again, I haven't owned any of those albums for ages, so it's not like I've played any of them for a while. The ones after Pump, I thought at the time, were way too long (high CD era lengths) and a chore to sort through. But I'm pretty sure George has repped for Honkin' On Bobo. So I could be wrong. If Aerosmith really do have assorted post-mid-'80s tracks worthy of their '70s selves, it would benefit mankind if somebody put all the good ones together on a CD-R someday.

Lord Tracy LP was 1989, btw (on MCA imprint Uni); so their later ones didn't come until 2004 (starting with a late-'80s-taped live album).

And yeah, I hadn't even noticed that the Trigger vocals were from two different people; duh, that totally makes sense. As does George's Jackson Browne comparison. (Had forgotten George blogged about them.)

I think I may have goofed on Honkin' On Bobo because of the cheap Chinese harmonica that came with it.

I mention it in the link below and no longer have the album or the harmonica, although I do still have
harmomicas. I remember it having one song on it I liked, "You Got to Move."

And that's about it. Everything else is a blank, so it couldn't have been really good.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2008/02/made-in-china-slave-labor-blues-harps.html

Foghat 2.0 -- they still call themselves just Foghat -- issued Last Train Home. It was a choice between it and Tom Petty's Mojo, coincidentally similar. Both bands wanted to do r&b/blues records and did. At least the Petty tune I've heard, which sounds like Chicago blues/Yardbirds/Brit blues boom love with Scott Thurston on harmonica. And another that sounds like Booker T. & the MG's redoing "Green Onions" with vocals.

Anyway, guess which I went with? Rhetorical, obviously.

Foghat 2.0's is essentially an old Savoy Brown record for the most part, which they ought to be able to do OK because the rhythm section is from SB. They perform "Needle & Spoon," a favorite of mine but Charlie Huhn, the old Nugent sideman, either isn't quite enough like Chris Youlden or dirty-sounding enough to be really good on it. However, "Louisiana Blues," a remake from SB's Blue Matter is great. It's a hard tune to ruin. They do a good version of "Rollin' and Tumblin" and "You Need Love" back to back without falling back on Zep steals. They've picked up a harmonica man for most of it, which makes an instro -- "495 Boogie" -- sound like early J. Geils with Magic Dick out front.

"Shake Your Money Maker" and "It Hurts Me Too" etc. I back-to-backed it with the Black Keys' first album, don't have the latest, and like it just as much.

I always thought old Savoy Brown comparisons with the Black Keys were apt, particularly for the albums Getting to the Point and the debut as the Savoy Brown -Blues- Band, just that the Black Keys couldn't maybe find a bass and keyboard player their age who'd want to do that stuff when they were starting out so they ... did the two man band thing. And stuck with it when it worked. They had the croaking vocal delivery down, anyway.

Foghat 2.0's not going to get any mileage but they'll enjoy playing it to the getting elderly on the circuit. Good album particularly if you want to hear the early-70's blues rock thing done by a couple guys who had a hand in inventing it.

"Louisiana Blues," a remake from SB's Blue Matter is great.

Fwiw, the Animals also did this number on that Animalism album I mentioned here yesterday, three years before Savoy Brown. Just saying.

I bet Lonesome Dave was a fan of the Animals. Anyway, they were all part of the Brit blues boom. Or at least the Animals are in my book on it. If you were white, a guy, and sang or played guitar, you were probably in on it if you lived in England. Unless you were Donovan.

xhuxk, you still have to secure a copy of Savoy Brown's Savage Return LP on one of your weekly vinyl scrounging
trips.

I reviewed that Foghat disc for AMG; didn't like it as much as you, though "495 Boogie" was very good. Pick up the new Petty when you get a chance. It's a really, really good album, with only one awful clunker (a fake reggae track called "Don't Pull Me Over"). Skip that one and you've got a solid hour of medium-hard blues-rock and some decent ballads. Plus, it was all recorded live in a room and sounds it. I think it's gonna wind up on my year-end list.

Amusing trivia: Bryan Bassett, the guitarist who replaced Rod Price in Foghat when the latter died, was the guitarist for Wild Cherry when they had the hit, "Play That Funky Music."

There were some things that could've been left off the Foghat 2.0 record. The bonus cuts
with Eddie "Bluesman" Kirkland. And "Feels So Bad". Foghat 2.0 not convincing at 'feeling so bad' ala the old timers.

I actually walked into an antique store on Saturday, and "Play That Funky Music" was playing over the radio (not loud), and it took me half a minute to realize what it was; first, I was thinking "What is this great '70s boogie rock hit; I know it, but I can't place it." So suddenly now I'm curious about Wild Cherry's other music, which I've never heard -- if the words are to be believed, well, "once I was a boogie singer, playin' in a rock'n'roll band," etc, etc. And I remember somebody saying once that their other music was "nothing like the hit." And Donnie Iris was in the touring band, right? Apparently they had a few other chart singles after their #1, but none went Top 40. So were their albums basically rock albums, funk albums, disco albums, what?

They had an early Seventies record on a label called Brown Bag that was supposed to be straight hard rock. But I've never seen it. The various things written say they were a strictly
regional act that found themselves playing for crowds that wanted disco and dance, so ...

And then by '76, there was "Play That Funky Music..." On the last Foghat 2.0 live album, there's an extended radio show interview with them where Bassett talks about Wild Cherry and begins to
play the single with Roger Earl and Craig McGregor of the band playing rhythm. It's funny
because they do it perfectly.

Judging by the album art I used to see, all the albums you saw in stores were disco/dance/funk things. The stuff always reminded me of the Ohio Players. But maybe not.

REUNITED: Sire’s Seymour Stein and The Orchard’s Richard Gottehrer will revive the legendary U.K. blues label Blue Horizon, signing Austin-based psychedelic rockers The Black Angels as its first act. The Vector-managed band’s third album, Phosphene Dream, comes out Sept. 14 in the U.S. To hear the first track, "Bad Vibrations," click here. The Orchard will handle the marketing, worldwide digital and North American physical distribution for all label releases. Stein co-founded the U.K.-based Blue Horizon in 1966 as a label specializing in the blues, featuring bands like the original Fleetwood Mac, Otis Spann, Elmore James, Chickenshack (Christine McVie’s original group), and Champion Jack Dupree. The original label was distributed in the U.S. by CBS, and Sony Music still holds rights to the repertoire. Stein and Gottehrer were the original founders of Sire Records in 1966. (6/21p)

No Mike Vernon, no cred. No going back without Gruggy Woof, either.

So Pat Travers' Makin' Magic has indeed been kicking my ass this evening, fwiw. (Looks like that was his last '70s album not to chart; his next one Putting It Straight, later in 1977, got to #70, a respectable leap if he'd just say been building an audience live over the course of three albums. What instigated the breakthrough, I wonder?)

Played Savoy Brown's Looking In from '70, the one with the proto-metal horror cartoon cover with that giant skull, again before that. And yeah, I get that that's their last one before 75% of the band turned into Foghat. Really love Simmonds's guitar tone etc. throughout, and the rhythm section cranks, but I gotta say not a whole lot of songs really stick in my memory banks. I guess "Leavin' Again" on Side Two comes closest. Think I've had that problem with Savoy Brown before too, actually -- Raw Sienna, maybe? Pretty sure that one didn't make it into Stairway partly because I couldn't think of what to say.

Before Savoy I played Styx's Crystal Ball, from '76, their first one with Tommy Shaw and, I'm guessing, the first one where they really ran away from hard rock in favor of theatrical ballet foo-foo bullshit; at the same time, though, they haven't figured out yet how to write hits. The la la la's really make me sick. Guess the closest thing to a rocker is "Shooz" leading off Side Two, though looks like Popoff also mentions the Side One leadoff "Put Me On" as being similar to "Midnight Ride", the near-Nugent raver off the previous Equinox. I dunno; if so, it's repeatedly slipped by me. Probably give it one more chance.

Loudest songs guitarwise on Strawbs' Hero And Heroine from '74 turn out to be "Just Love," "Hero's Theme," and the title cut. There may well be a concept, but I'm not sure about what. Was way off in comparing them to Tull above; more Fairport Convention crossed with Genesis, maybe -- in the prog-folk cuts, at least? Though that may just be because the singer, Dave Cousins, sounds kind of like Peter Gabriel.

Playing Cain's Pound OF Flesh CD now, for old times' sake. Yowww.

Hardest rocking new track I've heard so far in 2010, I think, might be Flynnville Train's cover of "Sandman" by America, a song I never even liked before. A country band, allegedly, but country in the Kentucky Headhunters sense, and this cut's as loud as that band's "Big Boss Man," at least. Total guitar jam. Rest of the new album is growing on me, but I don't think anything else gets this heavy. (On Evolution Records, whatever that is -- their debut, which made my top 10 a couple years ago, was on Toby Keith's label Show Dog.) Here's their myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/flynnvilletrain

Also liking "Outrage" by Sister Sin, for all its "Teenage Rampage" (Sweet, Bo Donalson & the Heywoods) quotes if nothing else. So far, rest of their new album on Victory, The Sound Of The Underground, is doing nada for me -- the guy who sings backup behind the girl constantly clunks everything up, and I'm not convinced the rest of the band's much less awkward. But I need to listen more. They're trad metal people from Sweden, and their earlier "One Out Of Ten" made by Top 10 singles two years ago, so they must be doing something right. A link:

http://www.myspace.com/sisterssin

I love 'Looking In', all-time classic LP

If you were thinking about putting Raw Sienna into Stairway and couldn't because it didn't, I figure that was the right thing. It's more jazzy and bluesy. The two songs that jump out from it are "A Little More Wine," which was performed on some olf late night TV show, which is what hipped me to it when I was a kid. Youlden was wearing fake fur, a top hat, and puffing on a cigar to the opening beat.

Plus, there's "Needle & Spoon."

I would have pushed (in fact, I'm sure I did) A Step Further for Stairway. It has the side long live version one chord, one riff metal boogie with "Hernando's Hideaway" dropped into the middle, performed at the Agora, I think. Plus, David Lee Roth pinched a couple tunes from the first side for his solo album of a few years back. I reviewed it for you, called it "antic fun," I think.

What instigated the (Pat Travers) breakthrough, I wonder?

The tours for Heat in the Street and the live Go For What You Know which recycled "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)." The band had Tommy Aldridge on drums and the story goes they were based out of Miami and enjoying the high life, such as it was, and then Pat Thrall came to the studio suffering from vicious hangover and wrote the lyrics for "Smokin' Whiskey/Drinkin' Cocaine."

You might also like "Poor Girl," if you give it a second listen from Looking In.

Coincidentally, with "Leavin' Again," you have the two SB tunes that were immediately carried over into the Foghat catalog.

And the latest hilarious quote from Ted Nugent.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/06/25/take-advice-from-the-ninny-nugent/

Times the Nuge called the Obama administration variations on the 'Mao Tse Tung fan club' in the media last week: Four.

Once for a slobbering interview by one of the New Times properties (you can tell how bankrupt and bad alties are when one of them actually sucks up to someone like Ted), once on Fox, and twice for two columns in the WaTimes.

So having gone back and checked, I can now say conclusively that I have no idea what Popoff was hearing when he put Styx's "Put It On" in the same category as "Midnight Ride." There's a (very) intermittent rock riff in there, but it's surrounded and buried in mush. Actually, occurs to me that one Midwestern precedent for Styx's abandonment of hard rock for thespian kitsch might be Alice Cooper, a few years before. Except Styx obviously weren't as good in the first place. Thing is, I still have at least a grudging respect for their '77-'81 The Grand Illusion to Paradise Theater period -- I still have all four of those LPs on vinyl, and though I don't put them on real often (and, the more I get into the band's earlier stuff, expect I'll put them on even less), I also don't anticipate getting rid of them any time real soon, since they all have a couple-to-few real hard-to-deny MOR/AOR radio cuts. Big problem with Crystal Ball is that it doesn't. (I've never heard "Mademoiselle," which hit #36 pop, on the air. Do think the LP ends on an okay guitar solo, though -- called, yuck, "Ballerina.")

Turns out the other 9-or-10 out of 10 track on Flynnville Train's Redemption, besides their America cover, is "Friend Of Sinners," about asking Christ's forgiveness since you've fucked up all the commandments. Might sound cheesy on paper, but a big part of what makes those two cuts rock the hardest is their use of space and quiet to let the rhythm and lead guitars build over the monster drums. They're also the two darkest and most menacing (and maybe the longest -- haven't checked) cuts on the CD. Rest of the album comes as close to Skynyrd as any contemporary country I've heard, with subliminal rockabilly and Chuck Berry parts and really good songwriting; "Preachin' To The Choir" and "On Our Way" (which says the band got their start back in '83 -- not sure if that's to be taken literally or not) being two of the higher highlights. "Turn Left" is the NASCAR song; "Scratch Me When I'm Itchin'" the horndog song; "Alright" the one that sounds like Dave Edmunds in Rockpile; "The One You Love" the token ladies' choice, and at first I thought they mushed out, but its guitars are really purty.

Sister Sin, on the other hand, can't really write tunes. Fast metal, theoretically NWOBHM-like or at least pre-thrash speedy (think their label likens them to Crue, Scorps, Priest, despite the girl singer), but the songs all sound the same, and the clumsy gang grunting dude makes them feel almost nu-metal, probably by accident. Still like the novelty of a 2010 metal song ripping "Teenage Rampage," but I wouldn't say that even that one, "Outrage," has much else to recommend it.

Tried listening to the new Gaslight Anthem album in the car (where it should work if it's gonna work anywhere, given this is working class Jersey road rock supposedly), and I'm not hearing them at all -- dull regular-guy singing, nothing rhythm, boring college-rock guitars. Occasionally a melody sounds slighly more rousing than the others, but if there are words there, the singer's not putting them over. More emo than Bruce, to my ears -- much less a rocking blue collar bar band like say early Iron City Houserockers. And they don't have even the wit of Hold Steady (whose newest album was their worst by far, fwiw) or the brawn of Dropkick Murphys to fall back on -- and I've cut both of those bands more slack than they've deserved over the years, to be honest.

Thinking that, of those four huge Styx albums, I'd probably rate Pieces Of Eight highest, for "Renegade" and "Blue Collar Man." By Paradise Theater, they've probably actually let dumb concept crap get the best of them, though I've always liked the Devoluted new waviness of "Too Much Time On My Hands." Draw the line at Kilroy Was Here, though I'd probably keep a 45 of "Mr. Roboto" if I had one. (Actually really love Tommy Shaw's 1984 synth-pop single "Girls With Guns" -- so sue me.) And I guess if a best-of fell in my lap that put all the catchy hits from these LPs in one place, I would get rid of them, to open up a little more space on my LP shelf, if nothing else.

And eh...forget I mentioned Skynyrd in re: Flynnville Train. Dumb comparison. Skynyrd had more than rockabilly and Chuck Berry going for them anyway -- for one thing, they were a lot funkier. And Flynnville seem much more inclined to be pandering (sometimes in the usual modern Nashville ways) as songwriters, and also (unlike Skynyrd) they're not geniuses. Guess I just mean that, like with the best Headhunters stuff, you can really tell you're hearing a seasoned, self-contained band, who know how to work and rock as a unit. Which, with Nashville still using session musicians no matter how loud it gets, remains a rarity. The guitars do sometimes sound kind of Skynyrdy, though.

...and they still do have a more swinging rhythm section than say Drive By Truckers (or Neil Young, for that matter -- can't think of when he's rocked as hard as Flynnville's "Sandman," which is neat since I've always figured America as the wimp version of Neil in the first place. Still have no idea what the lyrics are supposed to be about, though.)

You may not believe this but I saw more than one high school band turn "Sandman" into a fuzztone
proto-metal dirge around '70-'72. It was basically a simple dirge all along, so you could hammer the shit out of it. Which may or may not be what Flynnville does but thought I'd mention it. There was precedent.

The New York Times thing on Gaslight was more than enough to turn off all my curiosity last week.

If someone in the arts section likes it ... then it has no real business here. I stupidly bought the previous record last year, left a thumbs down on one of these threads. The lyrics were beyond terrible, much more so because they're so achingly sincere about it, they seem to really believe their own horseshit.

Worse is the Jersey Springsteen/Beaver Brown blue collar bar band shtick, except with nary a rock 'n' roll or Chuck Berry lick in any of the guitar players, just the ringing college rock thing. Which is similar to claiming you're in a Stones cover band but not one of the guitarists can pull off Keith Richards. The idea is that they've somehow squeezed all the roots and swing -- except the lyrics and image -- out of bar band rock. Perfect for NPR.

a fuzztone proto-metal dirge around '70-'72. It was basically a simple dirge all along, so you could hammer the shit out of it. Which may or may not be what Flynnville does

It's pretty close! Dirge into raveup, maybe. Wonder if any amateur versions like that from 40 years were actually recorded; if not, it's crazy that it took so long.

Playing Dirty Looks' 1989 Turn Of The Screw now -- Philly/L.A. big hair band, on Atlantic. Came in a giant box of discards from Metal Mike last week. Singing has the high squeal of Kix's Steve Whiteman, and like Kix they definitely seem to like AC/DC, song structure wise; funniest song title is "C'Mon Frenchie." But so far I'm thinking the production has ironed out all the meat from the riffs and memorable hooks from the songs. Maybe it'll just take them a couple listens to sink in. Don't think I've ever actually played a Dirty Looks LP before -- though I tend to confuse them would Dirty Tricks, so I could be wrong.

"Nobody Rides for Free" has a lot of swing, 'bout the best of 'em. That and "Oh Ruby" from the previous album. They were frequently an undercard band in LV.

Which is to say I could never remember much about their sets except they were competent, tight and like AC/DC.

was really enjoying Styx 2 the other day. had never played it before! just a really enjoyable album.