Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

What the hell could Nugent possibly be thinking.

Just got a reissue of a barely-issued album from 1973 or so, Let Me In by a Youngstown, OH-based power trio, Poobah. It's good stuff, musically anyway; the guitarist is excellent, and the rhythm section is solid. The lyrics (which are unfortunately reprinted in the booklet) are brain-crushingly awful, though - they make Mark Farner sound like Bob Dylan. Still, very good stuff. The original six-track album is padded out with twelve demos, recorded in various living rooms on two-track.

Haven't heard that one, but Steamroller, the Poobah album (from 1979 apparently) reissued on great but short-lived Monster Records a few years back, was awesome. Who's reviving the '73 one??

Liner notes say they had six albums! Monster also reissued one from 1976, called U.S. Rock, according to the inner sleeve booklet.

Courtesy of the collectors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bje4ErgDKnc&feature=related

They have a song called "Highway Gestapo"!

The debut is being released by Ripple Music - www.ripple-music.com.

Howler of the day, from Ted Nugent, naturally:

from my impulse to create/unleash the songs to my incredible band and the entire production team – is all about our united celebration of raw, instinctual primal-scream all-American R&B&R&R soul music ...

Soul music.

It's called overcompensating.

poobah were cool. they've been on the thud headz hall of fame for years. records are hard to find. to say the least.

bar bands of the 1970s: a picture thread

xhuxk wanted to know what DEK looked like in Allentown in the late Seventies. Major props to the bar band promo photo thread.

Without them, no Poison, no Cinderella, no Britny Fox, no anyone quite the same from the tri-state area. Kix included.

A reader left this on my blog, from an Alice Cooper performance on French TV in '81. It's from the Special Forces LP and Mike Pinera from Iron Butterfly was his guitarist.

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

I had to laugh.

Two passable, intermittently hard-rock-leaning major label '80s LPs I never heard of before, from Metal Mike's charity box:

Echo Park soundtrack, A&M 1986 -- Good hard-rock/bar-band/garage cuts by Jimmie Woods & the Immortals (a cover of Doug Sahm's Ray Charles "What'd I Say" update "She's About A Mover" and a sort of rock rap frat party banger called "The Immortal Strut"), Dean Chamberlain ("The Need"), and the Sights (kind of Clashy "Twice As Hard" -- not the same wimpy Sights who arose out of Detroit's White Stripes garage scene a couple decades later I gather.) None of which acts I know anything about; maybe they were just created for the movie for all I know. Only act on the whole album I've ever heard of before is David Baerwald, of David & David kinda fame. Tracks by Johnette and Mike Sherwood/Julie Christenson are fair-to-middling Ellen Foley/Shipley/Concrete Blonde-style big voiced gurl power ballads. Future Lillith type Toni Childs gets a "special thanks," but doesn't appear to be on the record. Never heard of the movie before either; Wiki calls it "a 1986 comedy-drama film, set in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The plot follows several aspiring actors, musicians and models." Apparently Cheech Marin, Susan Dey, and Elvira (playing a secretary) were in it.

Straight Lines, self-titled, Epic 1980: Vancover band, apparently, judging from where they recorded and where their management was based, which would mean they could be from the same scene as Streetheart, Loverboy, Sweeney Todd, etc., assuming such a "scene" actually existed. Good catchy keyboard-based AOR, turning toward Foreigner/late '70s Bad Co hard rock in the side openers "Heads Are Gonna Roll" and "Roanne" and especially Side One closing prostitute ode "Midnight Woman," which opens with a real brutal metal riff which comes back intermittently amidst R.E.O.-type harmony. Closer "The Things You Do" is nice Shooting Star pomp with a good guitar climax; "Sweet Water" goes into a cool Dixieland jazz part (keyboard guy doubles on sax); "She's A Rounder" and "Everybody Wants To Be Star" are tasty midtempo medium-rock semi-ballad whatevers. Can't say any of it's super memorable, but good pop sense, overall. Which seems to have been running in Vancouver's water supply in the early '80s.

god this album is just bonkers. my kinda bonkers too. in the same bonkers vein as santana/mclaughlin or lenny white solo astral fusion.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0bPcJ1PGbmE/S1D-1iUAMFI/AAAAAAAAAUg/fw8rH34lEQs/s320/Colosseum+-+Electric+Savage001.jpg

chuck, i know you like 10 inch records, well, you need this one if you don't have it. lotsa fun. on edsel/demon from 1980.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-9MKvIbR8E8/Sw58o7ZeroI/AAAAAAAAAqE/3c7XGWs4l6c/s1600/The+Pirates+-+A+fistful+of+dubloons+1980.jpg

Echo Park soundtrack, A&M 1986 -- / Tracks by Johnette and Mike Sherwood/Julie Christenson are fair-to-middling Ellen Foley/Shipley/Concrete Blonde-style big voiced gurl power ballads.

She was Chris D.'s wife and co-singer in Divine Horsemen, and then toured and recorded with Leonard Cohen. It was strange when I realized it was the same singer on some very different albums.

the fight at fenway! j.geils -vs- aerosmith! go!

Last: 8/14/2010 Aerosmith and the J. Geils Band rocked Fenway on Saturday, Aug. 14. Were you there? Was it all you expected it to be? Share your review here.

http://www.boston.com/community/forums.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aArts+and+EntertainmentForum%3a9500Discussion%3a3830570d-99c4-4574-96fc-a837906d4bdd&plckCurrentPage=0

J geils was great! They came prepared. Played two hours, non-stop and everything their fans wanted to hear. They could and SHOULD go out on tour tomorrow. Friends on the west coast are dying to see them out there. Its been decades!

Aerosmith started out great with Train Kept a Rollin and then it was all down hill from there.

They could have made it special with some older or rare songs for their home town fans, but they didn't. They stuck to their regular tour set list and it was a disappointment to a lot of people and long time fans. Did they really have to do PINK when they could have done something more classic like Seasons of Wither? really guys? Come ON! Throw us a dinosaur bone! It was a perfect night to stroll down memory lane with the fans that known you better and longer than anywhere else in the world.

We all could have been in Peoria watching this show with this set list and no one would have been the wiser. This was THE Boston show of their career and a special night for their long time, devoted fans ( that paid out the @@@ for these tickets!) and it could have been so much more and special. But in the end, it looked just like another day at the office for them.

Fenway concert Setlist

01. Train Kept A Rollin'
02. Love In An Elevator
03. Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)
04. Livin' On The Edge
05. What It Takes (Zzzzzz)
06. Pink ( REALLY?)
07. Last Child
08. Cryin'
--Drum Solo--
09. Rag Doll
--Guitar Hero Joe-- (DUMB)
10. Stop Messin' Around (w/Tony & Adrian Perry)
11. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing
12. Come Together
13. Sweet Emotion
14. Baby Please Don't Go (usually great, but tonight it came off as a self indulgent mess)
15. Draw The Line

Encore:
16. Dream On
17. Walk This Way

Notes: Steven played Dream On at a white baby grand piano, atop the Green Monster! Must have been nice for him.

Jenny Dee & the Deelinquents - really fun; they play around the Boston area all the time - check them out.

J. Geils - Fantastic, playing all the songs you wanted to hear with a lot of energy; Wolf sounded great, and J. Geils/Magic Dick/Seth Justman were their ever-solid selves.

Aerosmith - SUCKED. Started off with Train Kept a Rollin', and then proceeded to play all their cheesiest ballads & 80's crapola...Just when it couldn't get any worse, Joe Perry starts playing against Guitar Hero on stage, then Joey Kramer plays a 30-second drum solo, followed by another 30-second drum solo only using his hands. Very, very frustrating - waiting for them to just start ripping out more of their classic 70's hits, but that just didn't happen...Aerosmith had ZERO energy, which is really disappointing seeing how they were in Boston, and at Fenway no less...The show ended with -what looked like, at least - Perry sniping at Tyler over Tyler's remark that he's going to be pregnant with Joe Tyler's baby put the rotten cherry on the top of this mess. Very disappointing, Aerosmith-wise,

I was happy he didn't fall off the Green Monster but he did F up the beging of WHAT SONG? DREAM ON DUH!!!! The one he's been playing the longest. I spent over $300 per ticket to see them. My friend never saw Aerosmith. He thought they were good but I love my music and my ear caught everything. It's almost as if he didn't want to be there.

I never thought I'd admit this but "time to put the scarves to bed"!

I think the image that summed up the night for me the best was watching the heavily branded "Joe Perry: Guitar Hero" bus roll through the crowded streets -- Joe sitting right up front with the interior lights on so everyone could see him in his purple Disco-Dracula outfit.

He might as well have been counting out stacks of hundreds, stopping occasionally to give the crowd the finger and laugh.

The guys have completely sold out. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. I mean, they haven't been the same band since they started working with people like Diane Warren. It's just so obvious they made a deal with the corporate Devil a long time ago and now we're seeing the sad, inevitable end game.

Geils blew them out of the water, as far as a genuine performance was concerned.

It's been a long time coming, but I'm off the Aerosmith wagon. They've just made it too impossible to respect them anymore.

I spent $35 to see Slayer/Megadeth the other night and it was pure, blissful savagery. Sorry you had a lousy time, that Aerosmith playlist you posted above just looks horrendous.

i didn't go! sorry, should have put quotes around all that. i was just reposting stuff from the boston.com site. no way in hell i would pay a hundred bucks to see that. would love to see j.geils in a smaller place though.

Those were funny. The night sounded horrendous.

I raised the curious issue of Wild Cherry on this thread a few weeks back (and George has pointed out the Foghat II connection), so naturally when I saw a copy of the self-titled '76 LP with "Play That Funky Music" on it for $1, I picked it up. And while I wouldn't call it a hard rock record per se', there are definitely hints. I.e., you frequently get the idea of, say, a third-level Aerosmith-style rock band making a finanically beneficial move toward being a third-level Ohio Players-style funk band instead -- most notably in "The Lady Wants Your Money" (where guitar/vocal/songwriter Robert Parissi tries some Tyler-type tounge-twisted fast talk) and "Don't Go Near The Water" (best rock-funk on the album; I'd DJ it if I still DJ'd, I think, but there's still something awkward about their funk, sort of presaging what post-hair-metal bands like White Trash and Extreme -- who were known to cover "Play That Funky Music" -- would do with it 15 years later. Maybe even the Chili Peppers, though I'm trying not to think of that.) There's also definitely some remnants of boogie rock in the instrumental break toward the end of the big hit, and both that song and the closer "What In The Funk Do You See" explicitly address the move in lyrics (in the latter: "Forget Woodstock, I'm going on Soul Train!," after some possible Hendrix "Manic Depression" references.) Two soul covers: Wilson Pickett's "99 1/2" and Martha & the Vandellas' "Nowhere To Run," the latter slightly more rock and with some neat synth sounds (like a late '70s rock band, not a disco band, would do them) for seasoning. "Hold On" is their blue eyed soul ballad move, "Get It Up" mostly instrumental disco with a little rock guitar. Probably no surprise, as Northern Ohio boys, that they'd take the Players as their model, obviously. Goofy quote from one Bruno Bornino at The Cleveland Press on the back cover: "I've never heard a more danceable record. It's going to do for the wallflowers what man did to the dodo birds -- make them extinct!" Pretty sure actual disco critics hated them, or at least the hit, though; at least I can remember Michael Freedberg from the Boston Phoenix scoffing about it once. Which might make sense, since these white boys were clearly carpetbaggers. But "Play That Funky Music" went both #1 pop (three weeks) and #1 R&B anyway. They charted four more singles in the Top 100 after that, all from later albums, but none even got to the Top 40. And this album reached #5, but their two subsequent ones just hit #51 and #84. Still real curious about their earlier, allegedly more rock stuff, though.

I have a review of White Trash's debut sitting around in my newspaper files somewhere. It was a one or two sentence shred. Awful. Same with Extreme, known only for their disco angle, the
cover -- which I saw them perform at the Cat Club, a soppy ballad which was an MTV hit and Nuno Bettencourt who was a darling of guitar mags. What faddy gobblers.

Also probably worth mentioning though that of course lots of funk bands -- the Ohio Players included -- were known to work in hard rock/metal guitars now and then around that time, so it's not like what Wild Cherry doing it was really any kind of innovation; they were apparently just coming at it from the opposite direction. (For instance, I was listening to Millie Jackson's hilariously dirty-mouthed 1979 double LP Live And Uncensored over the weekend -- on which she covers Rod Stewart and Toto, not to mention Kenny Rogers and Boney M, not to mention whatever classical composer "Phuck U Symphony" is based on -- and I was surprised how so many of the guitars and heavy grooves on it came close to the loud Jimmy Castor Bunch or even Funkadelic albums that I put in Stairway To Hell.)

did the average white band ever do anything really heavy? can't think of anything. they were some of the funkiest white people on earth in the 70's and they helped to invent hip-hop and they ruled on soul train, but i honestly can't remember any hard rock jams. but maybe i'm forgetting something.

Good question. And I have no idea the answer.

Fwiw, I wouldn't be surprised if Wild Cherry actually sounded funkier by accident (as lots of hard rock did, just letting the funk emerge naturally from the boogie that was already there) when they were still playing hard rock, before they switched over and started making such of point of being funky, trying too hard. Which of course was probably part of what made Extreme (way overrated in Stairway btw, who knows what the heck I was thinking there) and White Trash and the Chili Peppers' supposed funk came off so stiff and dumbed-down later. They act like funk is simple music to play, when it's clearly not, and they wind up looking like inept nincompoops in the process. (Weird, because Extreme and the Chili Peppers at least theoretcally have "chops." Guess that's not enough.)

you need a very good drummer. very good drummers were plentiful in the 70's. never really listened to the peppers long enough to take notes on chad whatshisface's drumming. i did kinda like the crazy druggy pepper's guitar playing, but, again, in the 70's he would have been a dime a dozen. in the 90's he ends up being some hendrix-like god. or at least peppers fans think so.

who do we blame for the modern state of affairs? the velvet underground? wire? steve albini? i sound like a broken record and i swear that i like A LOT of modern music. i love modern experimental/drone/psych/whatever music. i love modern rap and r&b and metal. but modern rock? sad, sad, sad. all that small stone and tee pee stuff that i SHOULD love is mostly forgettable. one really good five horse johnson album in, like, ten years of listening to that stuff. and the cd i find myself playing the most lately is reo speedwagon's live you get what you play for album? that's where i go when i want solid rock in 2010? there is something wrong there. no offense to reo. its a great album. i don't count the new swans album. they are in their own universe. and, you know, even though swans "rock" me, its a different kind of thing. can't blame the stooges. people still love the stooges, right? so where are all the great stooges-esque bands then? i guess i gotta dig around on that rolling punk thread or something. (although to be honest ilm faves like jay reatard don't do much for me either. i swear i'm not that hard to please! i bought all the new siltbreeze records when they started coming out again. i liked the nu-buckeye state lo-fi charm of psychedelic horseshit and times new viking. even though it mostly reminded me of third generation ohio-noise from the early 90's. i embraced it at least.)

its a given that i miss stuff too. never really listened to turbonegro much. probably good rock fun there. i liked the wildhearts. they aren't really around now though, right? i definitely latched on to bands like the dragons and amplified heat when i first heard them. and earthless! some people probably would be bored stiff by 20 minute earthless jams but i saw them as a step in the right direction. gorge kinda made fun of me for liking that howlin' rain album, but at least they ATTEMPTED some sort of fun 70's/modern fusion. they were just a bit clunky at it and not entirely convincing. i guess i'm always looking for excuses to not listen to the black crowes. i don't know why.

Just got a Cactus live DVD in the mail, recorded in 2006/7 with Jimmy Kunes, formerly of one Savoy Brown lineup or another, on vocals. There are four songs I don't know, so I guess those are from the studio album they did with this guy in 2005, which I haven't heard.

As far as modern stuff, I don't know what's wrong either. I like Earthless, and I agree with you about the suckiness of the Black Crowes - I must have given them a half dozen chances and I've just never heard a single good song from them. Other good things I've heard this year: La Otracina's Reality Has Got To Die (excellent psych/space rock even though it's from Brooklyn) and Valient Thorr's new one, Stranger. But neither of those is as good as the new Tom Petty album.

(turbonegro) probably good rock fun there

Eh, not so much.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-09-09/music/come-back-to-the-norway-bath-haus-udo-dirkschneider/

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-11-08/music/perverted-norwegian-sailors-penetrate-the-shitty-of-satan/

"i did kinda like the crazy druggy pepper's guitar playing, but, again, in the 70's he would have been a dime a dozen."

so OTM

Chops isn't really enough. You also have to have a handle on how to play together. The bass & drums have to be locked in, like a machine. Keys too, & rhythm guitar. No one takes the time to do that anymore. Everyone's into self expression. Once you have that rhythm going, you can put anything on top.

Also tempo. Re. Chili Peppers funk, like Chuck Berry says, they try to play it too darn fast.

jesus, gary richrath on the live "157 riverside avenue". never fails to get me. the whole band! reo friggin' speedwagon! sorry, can't stop playing this cd.

modern rock? sad, sad, sad.... the cd i find myself playing the most lately is reo speedwagon's live you get what you play for album? that's where i go when i want solid rock in 2010?

The bass & drums have to be locked in, like a machine. Keys too, & rhythm guitar. No one takes the time to do that anymore. Everyone's into self expression.

So how, why, and when did this happen? What caused it? Eddie Van Halen, punk and metal's rejection of blues grooves, fear of being tagged a disco sellout, guitar and drum magazines, guitar and drum manufacturers, robotic '80s production, grunge? I basically feel like hard rock has been a lost cause for at least two decades now (since the early '90s), but really it's been longer than that. I remember the rhythm section on Appetite For Destruction feeling like a surprising anomaly -- a throwback to the funky '70s -- in 1987.And even Guns N Roses only really managed to pull that trick off for one album, while Adler was drumming. But I'm curious what other people's theories are. How did the culture of being a rock musician change that caused bands to not make great hard rock records anymore, when it seems like in the '70s anybody and his brother could get a band together and do it? (Which probably isn't true, but as time and dollar bins go on, it's clear that there were great hard rock bands coming out the woodwork, more than the charts or labels or radio could accomodate.) Sometimes I think the style just had a certain number of good years in it, and they ran out. But that doesn't make sense, especially since the sound of the '70s weren't so much codified as outright rejected over time. And even the stoner rockers, who suppposedly worship that stuff, never managed many memorable records.

i liked the wildhearts. they aren't really around now though, right?

They might be. But the last couple albums I heard weren't near the level of their best work (= Earth Vs. from 1993), and honestly I probably cut even that one some slack in the first place.

I do think I slightly overestimaed GnR's anomaly status at the time. There were other hair-metal bands that made great hard rock albums, obviously -- Cinderella, Faster Pussycat their second time out, Kix, etc. Warrant even managed a couple into the '90s. But my point is that, if hard rock wasn't already slipping away, Appetite wouldn't have come as such a shock in 1987. (And I say that as somebody who actually likes one Black Crowes track -- their Otis Redding cover, but still -- quite a bit.)

What caused it? Eddie Van Halen, punk and metal's rejection of blues grooves

The absorption of EVH's guitar style, the superficial parts, to a certain extent. The drummer in the Highway Kings came from a pop metal background, lowest common denominator, huge Stryper fan. He didn't know any basic rock 'n' roll when he started. Not EVH's fault but ...

However, it's my take that a lot of the early punk rock bands often did come from an area in the vague vicinity of classic rock. Certainly, when I was listening to the first records by DOA and the Subhumans, you could hear it. And all those submediocre SST bands had it.

But you'll recall I wrote that thing about guitar rock and young Werther for the Voice. There you had a selection of bands in which any sense of groove and rhythm had been steadfastly squeezed out for
the sake of a certain flavor of kitsch. All those emo punk records I reviewed came from exactly the same place.

The guitar's talent for expression was entirely left on the floor for the standard heavy chugga-chugga mid-scooped riffing, which turns the instrument into a bad but loud and heavy washboard, mediocrely played.

As for guitar mags, if you see them now, you know they always have to put a dead or old classic
rock guitarist on their cover, almost every month. The new guitarists with "hard rock" releases get half pages in the front of the book. Current metal stars sometimes get features, not often. They tend to focus on roots music, jazz and blues players more now. And some of them are young but a lot aren't.

A lot of it has to do with the aging of the population.

Do I want to play with younger guys in now that I'm rehearsing Dick Destiny again? No, I don't. Do I even want to play for the young? Nope. Plus, it works the other way.

And I'm not alone. People gravitate to their own tribes, and the tribes are also dictated by age.

This is unfortunate but it is the way of things, made more so by fracturing of any sense of social bonds or community.

But you are leaving out the discussion going on over in Rolling Country. Certainly, the hacks on Trace's new album can play good hard rock. So could the people on the Martina McBride album. And so does Sugarland's backing band, else they wouldn't be so able to effortlessly pull off "Footstompin' Music." Jason Aldean, crappy as he is, too. He's young.

Hard rock -- serious use of it as a way to pop music -- you know as well as I, was banished into country music. The stuff that doesn't go there, just does nothing for me. Like everything having to do with Josh Homme or the Mr. Foo-Fighter.

The guitar instrument and electronic manufacturers have to split to cover the bases. All the stuff you can get now is computer-driven recreations of tones and textures, modelled from popular fashion. And in every thing you get which has one or two or three hundred preset sounds, about half are devoted vintage classic rock, the rest to what's popular now. I have this pocket device from Line6, and it's sold on being able to make you sound like you have the amp structure from a bunch of bands I've never heard of. And you haven't either. The rest is all classic rock.

And what's been most popular in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games. Lots of new stuff. But an amazing amount of legacy classic rock.

Another thing left out is that, outside a few big metromegacities, there's no good dispensation to play hard rock and get good at it in front of an audience. This was already happening in the late-Seventies and early-Eighties. Unless you're going to have your own private parties -- which bands have always done, and which was something we did -- you just can't get good at it in the clubs or venues available to you.

Perhaps this explains Black Stone Cherry. They looked like they had had plenty of oppo playing too backwoods parties. But went the rubber met the road, it sure didn't sound that way. So they probably hadn't.

You have to be able to turn it up in front of a forgiving audience that's prepared to be on your side.
Not some awful six band split bill which has been cobbled together with the understanding that
everyone will bring a couple handfuls of acquaintance.

God, I saw this in soCal at a bunch of Angry Samoan gigs. Six or seven bad punk rock bands, each with own team of fans. Separate micro-styles, all intolerant of each other. The only band getting the dispensation, the Angry Samoans, now an oldies act with an entirely young audience. Ironically, the music written and played by people all young when almost the entire audience wasn't even around.

Mike likens this to a modern version of the audience for Berry or the old crabby African-American bluesmen but I always felt that was inexact and too glib.

And then there's always Green Day, who many like across age groups. Even though I don't. Technically, they're a lot hard rock with a pop sense, sneaking in through punk rock.

And then sometimes lotsa people are just bad at things they think they're good, or at least average, at. Hard rock being one these types of things.

As for the Black Crowes, they were really disjointed at the very beginning. It took them awhile to get enough so Jimmy Page would be having them as a backing band playing Zeppelin. When I saw them after the release of the first album, one show opening for Aerosmith -- who were by then well into their "Dude Looks Like a Lady" creampuff stage, the Crowes just fell apart.

I explained part of it over a decade ago on my domain biographical page. Excerpted, describing the mid-Eighties gigging climate:

The first and second Dick Destiny records found their way to college radio for reasons which mostly elude me. As a result, we got the "opportunity" to play some venues that catered to the college radio altie-rock underground in the northeast. Big mistake. Byron Goozeman, Bud, Carson and I toured it a couple times and playing for students enamored of college radio and the concurrent 'zine scene was always a disaster.

Since when did college students become such pansies, we wanted to know? When we had been in school, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were hip.

But it was a different decade and we got to play on stages with watered-down rock combos and clownish pop acts ... They Might be Giants and Ween.

Ween, for example, had not yet been "discovered" by rock critics and college radio when they went on before us on a triple-bill in Trenton, New Jersey. Imagine two jittery little nerds doing jumping jacks and other calisthenics backstage to warm-up before going out to mime over pre-recorded tapes of miscellaneous rubbish. At the time, they were part of an emerging and growing number of alternative acts that turned being calculatingly wretched into a fringe music entertainment that could be sold to people in their twenties.

Audiences that went out for this type of thing were a few years younger than us -- and they had no taste for heavy rock-and-roll unless a special dispensation had been made for it that week by an altie newspaper or radio station.

Very few of these gigs were productive.

Maybe that's a bit harsh. But -- already different tribes. Really, playing live with little
cassette tapes as backing.

Audacious. But still crap. Has an audience, too, I've found.

plus, nowadays anyone with chops who isn't into alt/punk/diy/indie just joins a metal band. cuz at least they can - hopefully - play live and see a little money (very little probably, but a little). if they are lucky. and then maybe down the line release a side-project hard rock/stoner album that nobody buys. except stoners. some of those records can be okay. metal dudes pulling out their 70's bong riffs. (blues and jazz being the only other chops-driven genres still around. but jazz and blues also genres where you will make even less money than a starving metal band.)

Ted on his most recent screw up:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/08/18/ted-cops/

Never heard of Endless Boogie until Pitchfork reviewed Full House Head the other day. Listening to it now, and they are officially the first good band I've ever learned about from that site. The riff to "Empty Eye" is pure Junior Kimbrough awesomeness. What I like about these dudes is that unlike a lot of other contemporary heavy blooze-rawk boogie outfits (Amplified Heat, for example), they don't tip too far in the direction of stoner metal. They're definitely in the spirit of early '70s stuff, but unique. Like this a lot.

Robotic 80s production was part of it, anyway. That cannon-shot snare on the two and four. In the 70s, with the drummer back in the mix, he could do much more. The 80s turned even great drummers into timekeepers. If you played more than just a basic backbeat, you'd clutter up the mix.

I think in the 70s there was a synchronicity between what recording technology could reproduce and what rock bands really sounded like. In the 80s the recording tech left the musicians in the dust.

Years of ilm have trained me not to attach a value judgment to any of that, though. Can't stop progress...

Years of ilm have trained me not to attach a value judgment to any of that, though. Can't stop progress...

Mutt Lange is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

Feelgood story about a 14 year-old fan meeting Mike Campbell at a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers show. No, seriously. It's good.

Touching story on legacy rock and the young, if you haven't seen it, from another ILM thread.

Yeah, that thread has already turned into some tedious "anti-rockist" bullshit.

So what do people here (assuming anybody's still here) think of Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers (from 1984)? Popoff gives it a 10, but it's been hitting me more like, oh, a low 8 or high 7, maybe. All sounds fine, but none of it blows me away. My wife, on the other hand, thinks it has two great songs -- "Knocking At Your Back Door" and the title track (which partly reminds me of "Kashmir"), both side openers, and both of which she says she remembers from '80s rock radio in Houston, but thinks the rest sounds meh to her -- too simple, not prog-dynamic enough. I like those two cuts (neither of which I've ever heard on the radio or anywhere else myself, I don't think, though "Knocking" was apparently a #61 single and album went #17) fine (also like "A Gypsy's Kiss," which is fast, like they're trying to keep up with NWOBHM -- as if Purp wasn't just as fast long before NWOBHM to begin with -- but my wife calls it "too hair metal," because of the vocals I think.) Overall sounds like Gillan's singing is more operatic, sometimes almost like he's chasing Halford or Dickinson, and why the heck would he want to do that? Nice tasty organ from Lord all over, but when Blackmore's not finding a good riff he's doodling too much. I dunno, the record's fine, I'll keep it, but I have no idea why people would call it a classic. Actually, even Popoff doesn't seem to like the last two cuts on Side Two (25% of the album) much. (He makes the "Kashmir" comparison with the title song too, though, I just noticed.) Wouldn't swear this is a better album than Abandon or Bananas, the two Purps I liked from 1998 and 2003. And it's definitely not in the neighborhood of their best ones from the early '70s, not even close.

By the way, never answered him, but I obviously agree with George about Nashville picking up the hard rock mantle, inasmuch as anybody has (since I've been saying that myself for the past several years.) Also don't disagree that "a lot of the early punk rock bands often did come from an area in the vague vicinity of classic rock"; what I said above about punk's rejection of blues forms mainly refers to punk starting in the '80s, I think, especially with hardcore (though there were of course some exceptions there, too, at least early on. And of course alternative rock still has bands like Black Keys and White Stripes and Drive By Truckers who like the blues and classic rock as much as anybody in Nashville does; I'm just usually not as excited about what they do with it, I guess.)

Re Perfect Strangers, I don't even remember that about it. The momentary enthusiasm, at the time, was tied to the fact that it was a reunion of the classic line-up.

And it wasn't just that Nashville picked up the hard rockers. Went the other way, too, I think. If you wanted to rock and weren't for the children set (and/or wanted a more classic white man's cartoon image) you had to go country. You didn't have to throw out all your clothes. Well, maybe you did if you were in Dangerous Toys.