Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

Unhinged as usual, this Nugent column obliquely defending odious Roger Clemens -- which manages to work in a non-sequitur calling Nancy Pelosi a witch:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/30/charging-the-mound-over-clemens/

There are many measures of failure of intellected in 2010 USA. That their is an audience for someone who writes this badly even with editors propping him up, no matter what the politics, is one of them.

Considering Nugent's standard stand on people who use drugs, which is to mercilessly throw the book at them, it's not even internally consistant.

Here's something local:

Rock n’ Roll Salvation Festival - Homage To Jimi Hendrix
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
5PM Door | Blue Star 2200 East 15th St. Downtown LA 90021 | 18+ | $10

Featuring:
Fireball Ministry
Sasquatch
Hallowed Engine
Sylvia Juncosa
Trash Titan
Zinngeschrei
=================

Didn't know Fireball Ministry was still around. Even more so, Sylvia Juncosa. This is just the type of small venue where I used to see FM do great sets. Musta been at least five-six years ago.

Think they put out an album this year or last, not sure which, but I couldn't really get into it. Actually, the only CD of theirs I still have, I think (definitely the only one I ever pull out), is their FMEP from 2001 -- and that one, partly for the Alice Cooper ("Muscle Of Love") and Aerosmith ("Movin' Out") covers. Maybe if I'd seen them live more I would've connected with later stuff.

i would think that would be fun, gorge, are you gonna go?

I might be going to that.

Possibly. Saturday's are busy in Sept. Football in the morning/afternoon. Rehearsals in the early
evening.

The latest Ted, possibly the best. Ted writes an anti-labor Labor Day column as he readies for a gig in Detroit:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/09/03/ted-plays-detroit-where-he-hates-the-middle-class/

George, you are out-doing yourself with those Nuge posts. Last two, especially. Really hope you can turn them into a book -- also starting to wonder how long it goes before Ted notices them himself. I think his head might explode.

Now, totally off-topic -- just figured George and Scott might be halfway interested in this -- Joe Queenan in the NY Times takes a literary tour of Pottsville, Reading, and Scranton. (Had no idea that a team from Pottsville were almost NFL champs in 1925, or that Pottsville ever had an NFL team at all for that matter.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/books/review/Queenan-t.html

all hail pottsville!

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/1b/eb/77/d-g-yuengling-and-son.jpg

my roommate in wilkes-barre during my one failed attempt at higher education was from pottsville. stan was a good polish boy who went to church EVERY sunday.

speaking of yuengling, wanna know if gorge got in on any of yuengling's pocono mountain brewskis. circa 1978. they should bring them back!

http://beercansrus.com/mcart/images/poconomtnset1.jpg

My birth certificate says I was born in Pottsville. I had my tonsils out in Pottsville. My dad was a Pottsville boy; he used to tell my mom that Pottsville was built on 7 hills, like Rome. I'd roll my eyes.

My grandfather used to always talk about the Pottsville Maroons, the pro football team. I'd roll my eyes. Schuylkill County had a semi-pro team of NFL rejects called the Schuylkill Coal-Crackers when I was in high school and the first couple of years of college. They were unbeatable in their league. Whenever I see the movie with Gene Hackman and Keanu Reaves, "The Replacements," I think of the Coal-Crackers.

I bought all my early Blue Oyster Cult albums at Pomeroy's in Pottsville. I got Humble Pie's Rockin' the Fillmore, at the first shopping mall in Schuylkill County -- in Pottsville. Boy, that was a good day. My grandpa also bought all my first Beatles records in Pottsville.

He had just bought one of those new-fangled stereos. You know, the little trivial record player with two speakers, but mounted in a big two hundred pound wooden cabinet that was furniture. So he was really hep to test the system and that included using me as a subject and what he thought I might like.

Schuylkill County also had the Molly Maguires. We could use the Molly Maguires now.

Yes, I remember those Yuengling cans pictured above. That was still in the bad-old-days of Yuengling, when it was still regarded as piss in county. Surprisingly, it's alternative brand made in the same building, Old Chesterfield, was not. We all drank Old Chesterfield when unable to get Gennessee Cream Ale. Schaeffer, made outside Allentown, was worse than Yuengling, however. Like Chesterfield, it's altie off brand, Piels, was not. Piels was often a fave in the car.

If you had a roommate from Pottsville who went to church every Sunday in college, he probably was a student at Nativity Blessed Virgin Mother. Nativity had the best hard rock dances -- every Tuesday night, open to all teens, in the summer.

John O'Hara was hated in Pottsville. Surprisingly, the worthless and deadening Conrad Richter, who was a Pine Grove boy -- my hometown -- was beloved. It's like saying you relished reading James Fenimore Cooper.

Schuylkill County was the home of cable television. We had it before anyone else. Pottsville even had an early version of HBO called the Star Channel in the early Seventies. My grandparents had it.
I used to think it was great. The grandparents did not. They would say surprisingly stupid things like, "Who wants to watch year-old movies anytime during the day?" I'm not joking. I would be left speechless when I was there. Star Channel failed in Pottsville.

The Queenan piece darts around quite a bit. He goes to Reading and obsesses on Shillington, one of the minor suburbs. Then he's in Dorney Park, outside Allentown. Dorney Park wasn't even as good as Hershey Park. But I did see Joan Jett a lot at Dorney Park.

He misses much of the coal mine culture of Schuylkill. Literally, when I was on the high school wrestling team, had our opponents had mats where you had to brush the coal dust off them before the start of the meet.

That enough Pottsville stuff?

Ha ha, awesome, I hoped posting that link would get a ball rolling. I want to hear more about those Nativitiy Blessed Virgin Mother teen hard rock dances, though! We sure never had those at Our Lady of Reguge (Or St. Isaac Jogues, or Immaculate Heart Of Mary for that matter.) Were there local bands, or a DJ? What hard rock songs got people dancing most? Did girls go??

And meanwhile, here is Chris Stigliano on a bunch of bands I haven't heard that sound like they might be applicable to this thread -- Tank, Stonewall, Fraction -- plus one I have heard (Los Saicos) who recorded their dozen songs in Peru in the mid '60s, and who clearly get compared to the Sonics way more from their screaming than for their rocking out with musical instruments (which they don't, much.) Still, "Demolición" and "Fugitivo De Alcatraz," especially, sound insane and unhinged enough that I don't mind owning their CD. (They also get compared to the Cramps, but I'm not hearing any rockabilly at all, really -- Guess just because they play real sloppy, or something. Anyway, Stigliano admits they're overrated, too, but if anything he understates the case):

http://black2com.blogspot.com/2010/08/so-what-else-is-old-dont-fret.html#links

...And I've never even really been much of a Cramps fan to begin with, to be honest. But the bottom line about that Los Saicos CD is that they just basically sound inept. Which I guess, for some garage rock fanatics, is enough. (They're not even very catchy.)

And actually, maybe Brother Rice or St. Mary's (all-boys schools though) had teen rock hard dances, for all I know. (I stopped going to catholic school in 9th grade. And I meant Our Lady of Refuge {where I went through 8th}.)

I want to hear more about those Nativitiy Blessed Virgin Mother teen hard rock dances, though! We sure never had those at Our Lady of Reguge (Or St. Isaac Jogues, or Immaculate Heart Of Mary for that matter.) Were there local bands, or a DJ? What hard rock songs got people dancing most? Did girls go??

Did girls go?? Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman! Companies of girls went. That's why they were so popular. You could learn how to do all sorts of things on the grounds and in cars on the periphery
of these dances.

Always had a live band. Specifically, the Jordan Brothers in their hard rock long hair phase.

They'd morphed out of being an obscure Sixties combo act with the first version of "Gimme Some Lovin' to chart in the US.

http://www.rhapsody.com/the-jordan-brothers

I remember my jaw hanging open when they did something from the second Trapeze album.

These things were in the summers, early to mid-70's -- when, basically, girls still tried to dance to hard rock (or at least feigned enjoying it because there was nothing else).

And you didn't have to go to Catholic school to get in. That was how broadminded the friars and nuns were toward the local teenagers. So we had nothing like that from Pine Grove Area in the summers and it was only a fifteen to twenty minute ride.

I made the same Sonics comparison w/r/t Los Saicos in my AMG review, and the Peruvians got the better end of it - I think the disc rocks plenty. At least as good as lots of neo-garage stuff I was listening to in the '90s like the Mummies or the Mono Men, and in many cases better.

Actually not sure I've ever heard the Mummies or Mono Men. But I'm skeptical, since basically none of the '80s/'90s garage revival stuff I've heard comes within even spitting distance of most great '60s Nuggets. (The Nomads probably came closest, though as I said way upthread when we were talking about it, bands who weren't really slotted as "garage" -- Romantics, Fools, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts -- came closer. Never got the Lyres, even -- whose Jeff "Monoman" Conolly the Mono Men presumably took their name from -- though Metal Mike always swore by one single by them, "Help You Ann," which I should maybe check out again sometime.)

The new Sword album has grown on me even more -- after "Night City," which would have a shot at my Pazz & Jop singles list if it was a single, my favorite tracks now are "Tres Brujas" (the actual single I think), "Lawless Lands" (which I agree with Phil has some Deguello in it), and space-rocking title track "The Warp Riders." Still think the vocals are something of a weak link in their formula, though -- not bad, but could be a lot more upfront and assertive, somehow. Remembered a couple days ago that I'd actually reviewed their previous album for emusic; thought the vocals on that, at the time, actually sounded kind of indie rock (didn't complain about them being too shouty, oddly enough.) Though I did compare some guitars to Thin Lizzy, already. Don't have the album anymore, but this was my review (I'd link to the page instead, but for some reason I'm not seeing the review there anymore -- weird.)

THE SWORD
Gods Of The Earth
Kemado

Austin quartet the Sword typify a particularly formalist direction for metal: One schooled in decades of the genre’s history. But contrary to published reports, they don’t sound especially “retro” – there’s too much thrash, not enough boogie. Their co-mingling of Slayer and Sabbath precludes purism to any one era.
On the band’s meticulously sculpted second full-length, lovely Celtic-like passages open a couple tracks, but you barely have time to immerse yourself in them before they’re shunted aside for heavier stuff. From there, the sludge can turn stately, slip into funereal doom, or take up arms and lead troops into battle–often randomly, all in the same song. Coagulated squeals and almost Thin Lizzy-like interplay emerge from the abyss, but the constant gear-switching avoids devolving into mere wank, and even drama itself somehow seems verboten.
Though “hipster-metal” allegations may primarily stem from the Sword’s emergence a couple years back at their collegiate hometown’s South By Southwest festival, there is nonetheless something audibly indie-rockish in the way the production buries J.D. Cronise’s mumbled grumble. But especially when the penultimate “The Black River” flows into the closing seven-minute “The White Sea” – parts of which are almost downtrodden enough to pass for the Swans – your head may be banging too furiously to quibble.

Was playing UFO's Phenomenon this morning, and realized the guitars in "Doctor Doctor" sound king of Lizzy-like too, actually -- though, for all I know, Schenker got there first. (Both bands now and then have exhibited a possible Springsteen or at least Van Morrison influence in their songwriting too, I think -- well, in UFO's case, I think George has has mentioned Frankie Miller, whose stuff I don't really know, but it's all in the same neighborhood, right? Also, both UFO and Lizzy seem really tasteful for hard rock/budding metal bands.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to like Force It more, since it's somewhat more metallic I guess, and it's indeed also pretty great, but Phenomenon's got the melodies that grab me, beginning to end. Plus "Rock Bottom."

Also been politically incorrectly playing Nugent and the Amboy Dukes' Call Of The Wild the past couple weeks; probably underrated it in Stairway (#239) -- you can really hear his guitaring and writing coming into their own. Most over-the-top charging killers are probably "Pony Express" and "Cannon Balls," the latter of which takes its riff from Tyranny And Mutation.

Also, two really good old hard rock albums by the ladies -- one really old, namely Birtha's self-titled LP on ABC/Dunhill, from 1972, which I guess isn't quite pre-Fanny, but it's close. Two very hard-kicking, hard-swinging funky rock cuts in "Free Spirit" and "Too Much Woman (For A Henpecked Man" (the latter about not settling for a guy who's a wimp), plus one heavy six-minute Uriah-style organ doomer in "Judgment Day"; the rest is Joplin/Big Brother blooze and ballads, pretty good, but those cuts knock me out.

Other one is Cheetah's Rock & Roll Women from '81, produced and written by Vanda & Young -- hot blonde and brunette (same last name, Hammond, so presumably sisters) in front of a five-piece guy band. Most AC/DC-soundalikes are the two side openers, but mainly this hits me like a real good Girlschool album. -- "Suffering Love" the catchiest tune, then probably "Scars Of Love" and "Come And Get It." (Okay, just checked Jasper/Oliver -- yep, sisters, born in London. "Backing band is mainly ex-Midnight Flyer"; who's that?)

Though I dunno; I should probably actually play Force It more; not really sure why it's never totally sunk in for me. (Popoff compares "Mother Mary" to Sabbath -- interesting. Also says "Doctor Doctor" on Phenom presaged Scorpions and Accept, hmmmm.)

And actually, those two funky cuts by Birtha I mentioned are probably just as heavy as their armageddon track...And I'd be curious if anybody's ever parsed the two women's vocals in Cheetah -- definitely get the idea there's two distinct voices, but I'm always slow mapping that sorta thing out. (Not clear if they're both singing on every song, if they take turns, if one's always the lead, or what.)

I guess, and it's indeed also pretty great, but Phenomenon's got the melodies that grab me, beginning to end. Plus "Rock Bottom."

Proceed to No Heavy Petting.

I have the Cheetah record. Kind of AC/DC-lite -- maybe too lite. Saunders loved it so I remastered to to CD with some clean up a few years ago and he was overjoyed. They might have charted briefly down under which wouldn't have earned them much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XQKEMsb33o

Most AC/DC lite.

The rest goes toward Eighties Heart with much more cupcake, the girls looking like Gilda Radner playing Candy Slice. "Spend the Night" starts like modern Dolly Parton, gets real shmaltzy.

Well, it's definitely got a couple schmaltz ballads, I admit that. And yeah, the AC/DC-ish songs are certainly some kind of bubblegum approximation, but I don't mind. Album seems to pick up whenever the sonic embellishments get just slightly sleekly technopoppish (which Girlschool were known to do on occassion, too, and even AC/DC themsleves, with the Who's Next-type guitar-as-synth parts on For Those About To Rock. Kix did it a lot, too -- slight nods to new wave, before metal got too pure for such cute stuff.)

Also like the teenymetal funk-rock of "N.I.T.E." on that Cheetah album. And I wouldn't be surprised if they were Suzi Quatro fans.

Speaking of Heart, I already linked to this on Rolling Country, but I actually like their new album okay; here's how I reviewed it:

http://www.rhapsody.com/heart/red-velvet-car#albumreview

I missed this earlier in the year. Now it seems real on time. American Dog just kills it. Had to make a favorite on my YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqsUuI4fI-w&feature=related

For Scott, who liked the Hammersmith (Canadian band) albums, they had an LP under a different name, "Painter" in 1973 before changing their name to Hammersmith. Mostly the same line-up and very similar. Check Ebay. Stand out song on the LP was the single called "West Coast Woman".

The weekly Nugent:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/09/10/big-in-fond-du-lac/

An editor I work for sometimes wrote asking for thoughts on "cheese rock" tied to an upcoming Nickelback show. He was looking for examples from the 50s till now; here's what I said:

Well, Nickelback's inexplicable popularity to me lines up with bands from the 70s and 80s like Journey, Styx, Foreigner...bands where you couldn't name the members on a dare but whose songs are fucking omnipresent. And I tend to think of that as a phenomenon that got started in the 70s, cause prior to that you had totally manufactured pop stuff like Fabian and Frankie Avalon (1950s "teen idols") or The Archies and The Monkees in the 60s. But the true horror of bands like Nickelback and all the other, less commercially successful but still nightmarishly prominent post-grunge acts like 3 Doors Down, Daughtry etc. is that they're NOT manufactured - these are organically formed groups of genuinely like-minded musicians, not just bored/cynical studio hacks brought together by a producer or an A&R guy, and yet they STILL make the worst, most ersatz "rock" music on earth.

Other acts to think about in this vein: Angel, Kansas, 38 Special...as far as 60s bands, I'm not really sure, 'cause I don't listen to much rock music from before 1969-70.

Hope that helps a little, anyway.

Maybe another way of characterizing the Nickelback thing is that these bands are groups of guys who
coalesce around the idea of really really wanting to make rock music for white milchtoast audiences.

It's their people.

And it may be impolitic to say this but it's the same audience that thought Hootie was the name of the the front man in the Blowfish. And why he's popular in country now. Becuase they don't actually have to think of him, as he's minimized in his videos.

It's also worth remembering that Journey started out as hard rock band only interested in achieving a reputation as chops monsters. They didn't write songs, they wrote collisions. It was all Neal Schon and Aynsley Dunbar and big hair and satin garments, doing an upgraded Hawkwind including a heavy metal version of George Harrison's "It's All Too Much."

That encompassed the first three albums. At which point Bill Graham management and the label told 'em to shape up and hire someone to sing Sam & Dave tunes.

Phil, I'm not sure I'm completely following you; are you suggesting that bands like Styx, Journey, and Foreigner were manufactured rather than organically born, back in the '70s? I don't think they were (Styx came up playing bars in the Midwest, right? And while Foreigner were clearly a hodgepodge of journeymen from both sides of the Atlantic, I don't think they were really studio hacks, per se'. Toto, on the other hand....) At any rate, they were pretty faceless either way (though it's not hard to name members of all three or four bands in retrospect), but they all made way better music than Nickelback's ilk, which I doubt you'd deny. (Hell, why not toss in REO Speedwagon or Heart, who started as legit rock bands and eventually evolved into AC/Tin Pan Alley hackdom?) I get the idea that this all connects more to the wearing out of the hard rock gene or whatever we talking about here a few weeks ago (it's not just that Nickelback and Three Doors Down etc. aren't making good hard rock anymore; it's that basically nobody is -- weird when the most acclaimed, and maybe best, really commercially successful rock band of the last decade is probably a duo with a lousy drummer.) (White Stripes, I mean -- I associate Green Day with the '90s, when they made their best music, though I guess some people don't.)

Also connects with an idea that Frank Kogan put forward years ago (and probably I did too), namely that, at some point around the early '80s, the "fake" stuff started rocking harder than the "real" stuff. (His examples were Foreigner vs. Minor Threat, which I agree with, though you can quibble with that example but still agree with the concept. I will say, though, that I agree with it less than I did then, and metal, at least, carried the torch for a few more years.) And truth is, the Monkees and Archies (and 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express and probably some '60s "bands" who pass historically as garage rockers despite never having actually played real garages) made way better music than Nickelback and Daughtry (neither of whom I always absolutely despise btw), too; it's not even close. I'm still not sure how, but somehow, grunge really fucked everything up -- musically, I think it mostly had to do with leaden rhythms and singing (though you could name other culprits too, metal for instance.) Grunge passed, maybe legitimately maybe not, as "edgy" for a couple years (though I'd say, give or take maybe a couple select Nirvana and Soundgarden tracks, its edge was really long gone by the time the '80s ended), and bands and fans still want to believe that myth. Inititally this led to some okay hard-rock pop by people like Stone Temple Pilots and Local H, but over time, it just got ever drearier, stodgier, more rote. And I really don't see how there's a way out of it, for commercial rock -- Basically, I'm pretty convinced it's over. Maybe if record labels held a gun to bands like Mastodon's and the Sword's heads and forced them to write songs for radio, with hooks and stuff, like George says happened to Journey? Years ago, I could see it. But now, would they even sell more? And who cares about radio anymore, anyway?

And going back to something George and I keep mentioning here, the studio hacks really did win as far as hard rock goes -- in Nashville. It's just not called hard rock anymore. But studio-born or no, it's a lot closer to hard rock than Nickelback will ever be.

So naturally, as usual lately, my two favorite hard rock records of the past few days both came out in the late '70s, when neither of them would have been classified as hard rock -- but in retrospect, yeah, for the most part, they were. Really like, and agree with, what Popoff says about the Boomtown Rats' 1977 Mercury debut in his '70s book -- "Punk rock, my ass," he starts out. Compares "Joey's On The Street Again" (one of two songs that carried over to their second album) to Springsteen obviously (though Irish Springsteen in '77 puts them dangerously close to Thin Lizzy obviously), but also calls "Mary Of The Fourth Form" and "(She's Gonna) Do You In" "kindergarten Aerosmith," which I agree with. "Kicks" is another great hard rock not punk track, no two ways about it. And he also says some of the riffs remind him of BTO, which I can also hear, and which reminds me that I wrote this about Ratt in 1984, explaining why they seemed more "hard rock" than "metal" to me then: "'Round And Round' has got more in commmon with BTO than Black Sabbath, or with the Stones than Led Zeppelin. It's not a change I complain much about." And Ratt were kindergarten Aerosmith if anybody ever was, which makes me realize that the distance between the Boomtown Rats' debut and Ratt's debut seven years later really wasn't that great.

The other one that surprised me by its hard-rockitude was Chris Rea's Whatever Happened To Benny Santini?, from 1978. Always loved the using-good-wine-to-deflow-virgins hit single, "Fool If You Think It's Over," but that's more like "Baker Street" -style soft rock. Title track (about what -- a trapeze artist maybe?) has Who powerchords though, and the real bruisers (somewhere in the general vicinity of '70s Stones, the tougher early Graham Parker/Bruce pub-rock, "Spirit In The Sky" fuzztone, whatever) are "Dancing With Charlie," "Three Angels," and "Fires Of Spring," which deserve placement on this thread as much as any early Tom Petty or Bryan Adams does. Have been meaning to connect with Rea's later stuff -- apparently, though he was just a one-hit wonder in the U.S., he's a respected singer-songwriter in the U.K. -- and even bought a best-of CD via Amazon last year, but I still need to listen to it more.

Meant "deflower," obviously. And another thing about Rea is he seems to be a really literary songwriter (one of the reasons I figure he's respected by middlebrows overseas), but you don't need to get all the details (I don't) to appreciate the songs. Though I get the idea that, as he got older (like happens to most such smart guys), his literariness probably continued way more than his rocking did.

are you suggesting that bands like Styx, Journey, and Foreigner were manufactured rather than organically born, back in the '70s?

No, I'm saying exactly the opposite, that lame as it is, cheeseball mainstream rock was in fact the product of bands getting together to sound like that on purpose, rather than being hired to do a job by an A&R exec or a Kim Fowley-esque throw-shit-at-the-wall producer.

Okay, that makes sense -- I just wasn't sure.

Also may have overstated the Who case on that Chris Rea title track -- guitars might have as much McGuinn as Townshend in them, and via "Running On Empty" in either case. Also maybe not so odd that a singer-songwriter would a few some Stonesish moves in the late '70s, since even guys like Billy Joel and Elton John were known to do that on occassion in the '70s. Just makes me sad that singer-songwriters back then made more rocking records than actual honest-to-god rock bands do now.

I think we covered Styx a bit, too. The Wooden Nickel stuff rocks. Equinox rocked. After Curulewski, a guitarist, got booted and Tommy Shaw came in you had the conscious move into cheeseball, culminating in something like Mr. Roboto.

Mick Jones, the guitarist for Foreigner, was definitely a hired gun. Leslie West used him and he then holed up in the studio trying to figure out who he could put together to make Foreigner. Nevertheless, I still like a lot off the first two Foreigner records.

Damn Yankees were at the apex of cheeseball. Something of an oddity because Ted Nugent consented to not being Ted Nugent for two whole records, which put him back in the charts.

Still on the cheese thing and the hard rock pickers gone into modern country. Two perfect examples, Lee Brice's "Love Like Crazy" that veers right into Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers big jangle. Lyrics total horrid shit written to touch all the heartstrings of the hopeful white milchtoast crowd always in need of the same three deadening pieties -- marriage, prayer and hard work/money.

And Reba Mcentire's "Turn Up the Radio" which has a hard rock band backing. With slight volume increase and loss of meaningless fiddle, could've been any standard act from Eighties video.

Austin Statesman feature from this morning's paper on never-album-recorded '70s all-original rock band Too Smooth, said to have opened for Nugent, Skynyrd, and Golden Earring; also said to have been scouted by labels, which ultimately decided they were too prog for the Grand Funk crowd, but not prog enough for the Yes/Crimson crowd. Which means they might have been great -- unless they were horrible. Guitarist Brian Wooten later went on to play for Christian rockers Petra and Whiteheart and finally -- you guessed it -- Trace Adkins' stage band.

http://www.austin360.com/music/despite-the-lack-of-an-lp-too-smooth-909698.html?printArticle=y

The NY Times, meanwhile, put Kings Of Leon on the cover of their arts section. No comment. (And no mentions of pigeon shit, that I noticed while skimming anyway.)

No comment deserved. Couldn't make it to the runover. Kings of Leon have nothing to do with hard rock.

Good example of throwing lots of money and the hired skill at a bunch of journeymen and eventually getting something middle brow and kind of grand sounding, something that doesn't turn off some arena crowds.

You can hear their names again and again and you still can't tell -- or even care -- who's who in pix.

It's the Followhatsises. Their daddy was a preacher. The go swimming in cutoffs. Kind of stunning their isn't even a Mark Farner or Lonesome Dave in the band.

As far as my ears can tell, they've never had much if anything to do with "garage rock" or "Southern rock" (outside of, you know, coming from the South, but so did R.E.M. and nobody ever used to call them Southern rock -- hell, nobody used to call Tom Petty Southern rock even), either, though I've yet to see a feature about them -- including this uncharacteristically puffy Pareles one, which mostly reads like a publicity bio -- that didn't call them both. The band's say-nothing boilerplate quotes in there suggest they've got no personalities to speak of, either, same idea I've always gotten for their music. Suspect they must have pretty decent management and promotion teams, though, given how they've actually seemed to have turned that passably interesting seven years ago preacher's-kids backstory (where every piece written about them since their '03 debut EP has tried to hang its hat) into what I gather is a steadily building career (touring-wise at least as much as recording-wise) at a time when most everybody else is hurting, despite basically sounding like just more generic post-grunge hacks (less heavy than most, actually, which is probably one of the real selling points -- guess an obvious hack precddent would be the Foofighters, who had a backstory of their own). And people take them seriously like they'd never take Nickelback, who are sure no worse, seriously -- three of Rolling Stone's top 80 Albums of the Decade a few months back, which is beyond ridiculous even by Stone standards. So Kings of Leon clearly have big friends in high places. Might make for a good business story. As for music, I still stand by what I wrote in this Singles Jukebox review last year:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1024

Eh, okay, re-reading it, "publicity bio" is a little harsh. Reads more like a rushed Billboard feature, albeit without the business reporting, which means there's not much left to get from it. And admittedly those Entertainment Weekly-style "Fall Preview sections" that everybody from the Times on down insist on running to bring in seasonal ad dollars these (this piece led the section off) tend to be puffy and rushed by definition -- I know, because I've worked on a few. Still wonder if it's cynical to wonder, though, whether leaving out any mention of the very recent and highly visible bird-poop incident was some precondition to the Times being granted an interview with Caleb Whatshisface, and still wonder how most his pat bullshit quotes made it past the editing process. ("I just want to say thank you to everybody who’s been there with us since we were on the small stage.” "We don’t want to go in there and do something that isn’t real and something that doesn’t really move us.” Wow!) Also, the piece actually calls their early music "garage punk," which makes even less sense if you've heard it than "garage rock."

Anyway, from the CMT blog a few months ago: "Would Country Artists Cancel for Pigeon Poop?"

http://blog.cmt.com/2010-07-26/would-country-artists-cancel-for-pigeon-poop/

The sounding like Bob Seger thing at jukebox was utterly baffling.

Doobie Brothers phenomenon, maybe? Uninteresting faceless band big with bikers, allegedly kind of rocking -- one song, maybe "China Grove" -- winds up with lots of play and raging success for no apparent reason. Eventually turn into total cheese, become ubiquitous, and still no one can name anyone in the band.

KoL have always (when I've bothered paying attention to them at all) sounded to me like the worst aspects of Nickelback and the worst aspects of the Strokes mushed together into one worst aspect of contemporary culture.

From the xhuxk link:

For those of us who’ve spent our lives sighing at rock ...

If only we could lift such weights and crosses from his shoulders. Heh.

By the way, in other "current (maybe) hard rock"/"music present-day bikers supposedly listen to" news, I Netflixed the pilot episode of the first season of Sons Of Anarchy last night (had never really heard of the show until last week -- I'm always way behind where TV is concerned -- though I'm pretty sure I'd seen people wearing the merch before.) Jury's still out on the show itself, and may continue to be for a few more episoides (want to give it a chance), but here's what was played in the one I saw last night. (Some of it sounded good, at least in context, and I definitely guessed Black Keys right though I couldn't have guessed the title. They also do the theme song of HBO's West Bloomfield, Michigan-based Hung, which I Netflixed through the first season of last month.):

1x01 - Pilot
The Black Keys - "Hard Row"
Year Long Disaster - "Fool and You"
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Stop"
Album Leaf - "Writings on the Wall"
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster - "Plenty Strong, Plenty Wrong"
Lions - "No Generation"
Lions - "Machine"
Fireball Ministry - "Kick Back"
Sun Kil Moon - "Like the River"
Gia Ciambottie - "Bobilicious"
Campana de America - "Tus Ojitos"

Had never heard of Lions before, though looks like their music shows up in some subsequent episodes as well.

You might as well give up on Sons right now if you're not planning on catching up with Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. It's one long story.

Oh, I'll keep plugging if I don't get bored. I almost gave up on Breaking Bad after a couple episodes, but I'm happily through two seasons now. (That is, a season or more behind people who actually have cable TV, as usual.) Still, gotta say that Sons Of Anarchy pilot probably sounded more hard rock, soundtrackwise, than any other show I've bothered with lately, which should count for something. Not sure whether they keep it up later or not.

They do. Sometimes when they wanna use an expensive song (something by the Stones, say), they'll record a cover version with Katey Sagal singing. She's pretty good.

Still, gotta say that Sons Of Anarchy pilot probably sounded more hard rock, soundtrackwise, than any other show I've bothered with lately

Supernatural -- losts of classic rock. I used to even notice them using UFO.

http://fan.cha-otical.net/spnmusic/episode3.php

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/09/17/but-what-about-bob/

Where's Myonga? Leave a comment, I dare you.

Captain Beefheart style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGkjQLkhZmQ&feature=player_embedded

Story about census resisters, such funny people, firsthand. Plus a hard rock tune made for it.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/09/20/class-war-and-census-business/

Ha ha, definitely preferring the Friedman/Beefheart China toilet remix to the original, George. (Still need to check your census post.)

Barely got through those Tea Party Seger parodies though. (For those who haven't heard, Jamey Johnson has also apparently been covering Seger's "Turn The Page" on tour, though I haven't heard it, or checked youtube to see if it's up there anywhere. I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if he first learned of the song from Metallica's version.)

Finally, anybody out there have any use/justification for late '70s New York City punk band the Stimulators? Listening to a CD reissue of their old R.O.I.R. cassette (which I never heard at the time) now, mostly live 1978 to 1981 and complete with a "Rock 'N' Roll All Nite" Kiss cover, and I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody would have given a shit about them then. Am I missing anything?