Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

Yeah, or a bumper sticker at least. I owe you one for pointing out that interview to me, George. But I couldn't resist.

This robotsforronnie blog (named for a Crack The Sky song, right? Or are they both referring to some sci-fi thing I'm not nerdy enough to know about about?) stuff looks promising. I'd run across it before while googling individual albums, but never really explored it much. Guess I'll have to now.

Youtubed that new Weird Al Craigslist Doors parody George mentioned a few posts up, and I second his approval of it. Anybody who hasn't heard it, do so.

Spent some time in the past couple days, for the first time in 23 years I guess, with the first Georgia Satellites album, which I probably underrated in their time. Actually preferred the followup single "Battleship Chains" to the big goofy hit back then; I was wrong about that, I think, but "Battleship Chains" is still good. But I guess "Railroad Steel" is the album's heaviest track; "Can't Stand The Pain" and "Nights Of Mystery" the most Stones-sliding; "Over And Over" a good "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" rip; and they don't censor the lines about "slant eyed ladies" in their "Every Picture Tells A Story Donut" cover. Suddenly I'm curious, though -- Obviously they hit on the basis of what was more or less a novelty hit (like say Timbuk 3 or whoever), but what audience, if any, were they originally marketed to? A few years later you could see anybody from hair-metal (esp say Faster Pussycat or Rock City Angels) fans to country (esp say Kentucky Headhunters -- and John Anderson actually covered "Keep Your Hands") fans going for them, not to mention Black Crowes fans a few more years after that, but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who? They really seem like an anomaly for that era, unless I'm not thinking of somebody. (Replacements fans? Jason and the Scorchers fans? Screaming Blue Messiahs fans? As if those bands even had that many fans to begin with.) (Okay, I got it -- Mellencamp fans, right?)

I don't know their two subsequent LPs at all. Metal guy Popoff thought they got a bit better (his scores go 6 to 6 to 7); old Stones and Skynyrd supporter Christgau thought they got slightly better then worse (B to B+ to C+). I don't know who to believe.

did you like any of the dan baird solo albums? i only really remember his early 90's hit, i love you period.

"but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who?"

yes. stones and zz top fans. and even ac/dc fans. rootsy/retro/southern rock is something that major labels have always pushed because it is something they know how to sell and it doesn't confuse them. and they like it! and its why the 80's were littered with the bones of Treat Her Right and The Brandos and all the cowboy Long Ryders/Jason & The Scorchers bands.

Well, the labels don't push it now! (Oh wait, yes they do...they just call it "country music" now instead of "rock," duh.)

So I guess you're saying the Satellites weren't an anomaly in '86 after all, and who knows, maybe you're right. (Were Treat Her Right and the Brandos any good? I never gave either of them a moment's thought. Never heard Baird's solo stuff, either.)

Also, you know who probably would have loved the Satellites? Tom Petty fans! They could have totally toured with him, and for all I know maybe they did.

i got in a copy of the first Junkyard album at the store. gonna play it tomorrow. haven't heard that stuff in years. brian baker boogie is the only boogie. hahaha!

you know who are the only people breathing a LITTLE easy in major label land? people dealing with country albums and acts. they still sell! they're easy! it's fun to hang out backstage at country gigs! no whiney grunge druggies. it's really the last of the old time biz. they can still sell a million chesney records in walmart.

okay, i'll be more specific. people in 1986 who bought that Georgia Satellites album MAY have bought one or more of these albums that also came out in 1986:

david and david - boomtown

stan ridgway - the big heat

corey hart - fields of fire

eddie money - can't hold back

bruce hornsby - the way it is

bob seger - like a rock

billy squier - enough is enough

dennis deyoung - back to the world

steve winwood - back in the high life

jackson browne - lives in the balance

elvis costello - king of america

billy joel - the bridge

brian setzer - the knife feels like justice

steve earle - guitar town

eric clapton - august

southside johnny and the asbury jukes - at least we got shoes

the del lords - johnny comes marching home

the smithereens - especially for you

timbuk 3 - greetings from timbuk 3

kansas - power

steve miller band - living in the 20th century

boston - third stage

the rolling stones - dirty work

dwight yoakam - guitar, cadillacs, etc, etc

rem - life's rich pageant (their mellencamp record)

huey lewis and the news - fore!

paul simon - graceland

bon jovi - slippery when wet

bruce springsteen - live/1975-85

bangles - different light

bodeans - love & hope & sex & dreams

green on red - no free lunch

talking heads - true stories

a VERY serious post-born in the usa amber waves of grain standing in a field on your album cover yankee doodle vibe to 1986. the statue of liberty, you name it. u.s.a number one! for some reason. even with euro acts. the eurythmics were practically a bluegrass band in 1986!

i LOVED keep your hands to yourself the moment i heard it. and they played the video every hour on mtv. probably one of the only big rock hits of that year that i loved. all i was listening to that year was sonic youth and crass and rap. and bad hardcore records. and reign in blood.

still one of my favorite songs to hear on a car radio ever. top ten, maybe. it's right up there with stranglehold, don't fear the reaper, back in black, and basically anything by b.t.o. or steve miller.

what audience, if any, were they originally marketed to?

There was a Georgia Satellites EP I had that was done by their first manager, an Englishman named Kevin Jennings. They'd broken up and Jennings took some tape to England, where it was made and garnered some attention. Then the US label, Elektra, got interested and the band was put back together. Or perhaps vice versa.

I saw them frequently, mostly head-lining. On the beach in Asbury, with Joan Jett in support. Great show, lost one lens from my glasses in the sand in the front of the stage.

By their third album, the audience had evaporated. At one the Cabarets, they were headlining over some faddy Todd Rundgren-produced act, the Pursuit of Happiness. Couldn't have been more than twenty people in the place. They told me MTV wouldn't play their video because it had a hardcore porn star in it, Kitten Natividad.

Dan Baird was a big fan of the Replacements, I think.

His solo albums are fair, like the Yayhoos albums. They all sound the same. If you like the drawling vocals and the unadorned Telecaster playing boogie licks straight up into a big amp, you like him.
First solo album is probably the best although the second also has some better than average songs including a great cover of Joe South's "Hush" done ala Deep Purple. Lead-off cut, the album was called "Buffalo Nickel," has a song pretty obviously inspired by the Replacements, called "Younger Face."

but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who?

Well, me. I was still buying ZZ Top records, not Stones records.

>>Jason and the Scorchers fans? Screaming Blue Messiahs fans? As if those bands even had that many fans to >>begin with.)

They didn't really have any fans, as you've noted. Georgia Satellites were one-hit wonders, with all that entailed. When they were all over MTV, they might have done some opening dates with the Bangles on their national tour, which was probably very odd. In England, they opened for Status Quo, who were gigantic in the mid-Eighties. And that's a pretty good match.

I always thought the second album, Open All Night, was marginally better than the debut, if you cancel the impact of the hit single. The third album, "Land of Salvation and Sin," just repeating
things.

Great version of "Almost Saturday Night" on a best of CD. Musta been a B-side or promotional thing. They also had added longevity due to "Hippy Hippy Shake" in the Tom Cruise movie, Cocktail.

Always felt they should have done a live album as a swan song and last stab at revival.

were littered with the bones of Treat Her Right and The Brandos and all the cowboy Long Ryders/Jason & The Scorchers bands.

You forgot the Del Fuegos. All these bands were much better live than on LP, while the Satellites were really good on record and even better live -- plus the benefit of a hit played everywhere. I remember seeing the Del Fuegos was a revelation compared to their records, which did absolutely zilch for me.

Oh yeah, the BoDeans belong in this category too.

I wonder if the Georgia Satellites got their big break in any way from the association with "Money Changes Everything" by the Brains (G.S. member/writer) and the Cyndi Lauper connection.

Maybe the label was looking for the next Hooters.

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

Probably mentioned it above somewhere, but the new Drivin & Cryin album Great American Bubble Factory is actually pretty enjoyable -- I get the idea they were noticing the Drive By Truckers' modicum of success and figured, "hey, we can do that," so they did (and better than the DBTs have done lately, I'd say.) Lots of Crazy Horsish atmosphere in the longer and slower songs, which can admittedly get wearing, but I mainly like the short fast ones -- Opener "Detroit City" (which namedrops the MC5), "(Whatever Happened to the) American Bubbble Factory, "Get Around Kid." And those first couple songs, coupled with "Midwestern Blues" and "This Town" and "Preapproved, Predenied," seem to indicate an apparent recession theme, though I haven't had time to listen to the album enough to figure out whether they've got anything especially insightful to say about it. Consistently pleasant melodies, though, and good washes of guitars. Have a feeling they've been pretty consistent as Southern rockish also-rans over the years, so I'm not claiming this is the best thing they've done; still wish I had a good best-of of their earlier output to refer to, though I've always been fairly fond of 1993's Smoke (which had more AC/DC boogie in it than their earliest albums) and 1999's Essential Live. Main Achilles Heel has always been the vocals, which are a bit mush-mouthed; not saying that problem's necessarily been rectified 23 years into their career (debut was 1986, just like their fellow Georgians Georgia Satellites), but at least on a lot of the new album they annunciate enough to get by.

Fwiw, Popoff gives their 1988 Whisper Tames The Lion and 1989 Mystery Road both 9's, and 1995's Wrapped In Sky an 8 -- pretty certain I've never even heard those, so it's not like I'm any kind of expert. The other three albums he grades in his 1997 metal guide get 6's and 7's (the latter for Smoke), so he apparently thinks they're fairly consistent, too. I'd still be surprised if I'd like them as much as he seems to, though.

I like a lot of Mystery Road; "Honeysuckle Blue" was the big hit in GA but I take it they never broke anywhere else. "Wild Dog Moon" was a deep cut big in my Georgia high school also, and "Straight To Hell" (not a Clash cover) was sung around many a campfire in those days. They were bigger in Atlanta than anyone save REM for a few years (I saw a benefit Kinney played with Peter Buck around this time, closing that circle). I never figured out how they got signed to Island, though.

Popoff gives their 1988 Whisper Tames The Lion

Probably for "Powerhouse" which is the only number on the LP I liked. D&C was a fave of my ex-wife, which is how I was introduced to it.

In other matters:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/28/escape_from_blogger/

i've always felt like drivin' & cryin' were an underrated band that i, nonetheless, never felt like listening to. see also: thin white rope.

Thin White Rope are so good - I'm going to put some on now - I'll bet someone like Josh Homme digs 'em ...

This robotsforronnie blog (named for a Crack The Sky song, right? Or are they both referring to some sci-fi thing I'm not nerdy enough to know about about?) stuff looks promising. I'd run across it before while googling individual albums, but never really explored it much. Guess I'll have to now

Yep. It's a bit to go picking through, particularly astounding because he appears to have gone to the trobule to reupload quite a bit of the out-of-print material after various parties had it flagged off file-sharing sites. So he is nothing if not utterly committed. And it underlines the fact that it's almost impossible to be a completist. There's always another hundred or so never-wuzzes and it-seemed-great-at-the-times to be found.

I'll say it again: If you'd told me in 1985 that, for instance, both Bulldog vinyl albums -- including "Smasher" -- would someday be put on a network and I'd have them again (after my insane parent tossed out my record collection in totality) if I wanted, I'd have called you nuts.

That said, Bulldog's "Smasher" isn't quite what I remember it as being.

But the first two Thundermug records, which I'd never heard, owwwwwwww! Orbit! Now that was
some LP.

And why were they never allowed into the American market? It's a mystery.

Really, robotsforronnie is for those listeners who really really really want to hear all of Bad Boy's albums, the band Milwaukee made famous. Seriously. That's me.

Actually got two promo CDs in the mail today that made me happy that I still get promo CDs in the mail (which honestly hardly ever happens anymore):

Fabulous Poodles Mirror Stars/Think Pink (American Beat)

Laughing Dogs Laughing Dogs/Meet Their Makers (American Beat)

I don't even know if the Laughing Dogs were ever any good (pretty sure I've owned their debut LP before, and never liked it enough to keep it), but I'm still happy. American Beat is just about the best label in the world, I swear.

Oh, and by the way, lest some readers want to let fly on blogs like robotsforronnie and others.

They hook to file-sharing sites. And not infrequently, although not always, these links expose you to
malware.

It doesn't happen all the time. For me, it's about a ten percent ratio. It doesn't affect me much because, having been in at the dawn of virus-writing on the net, I can see them as they arrive and peel them off the machine without anti-virus software.

But that's not the case with everyone. So surf with caution and safely. It's not the music blog faings which are responsible. It's the phenomenon in which filesharers are easily poisoned with malware seeded into their advertising.

That's "music blogs failings"...

Duff McKagan's pic ready for serving as the illustration to go with the dictionary's definition of
"the dilettante." Of course, he's not a dilettante at hard rock. But he sure is at everything else
as man-goes-to-collij-now-that-it-no-longer-matters and I-is-writing-a-music-column-now-for-alternative-weekly.

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2009/09/my_records_of_the_1970s.php

Some exceprts. Seriously.

"All I knew, however, was that there was music I loved, some I didn't, and some I outright despised."

Do tell us more.

"ZZ Top, Tres Hombres: Kick-ass American blues from down Texas way. Yeah, I know that I've pimped these guys a lot lately . . . but I really can't say enough about just how great they were and are."

Belabor the obvious, guy, why dontcha!

"Led Zeppelin, anything: These guys put a soundtrack to my life not only in the '70s, but also now and again to my life now."

"Thin Lizzy, Dedication (The Very Best of Thin Lizzy): Oh, Rosalie! I really, really love this band>"

The <A HREF="http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/view/anchower";>real Jim Anchower</A> giving the ol' brain cells quite a workout.

"Badfinger, anything: A magical band with a tragic ending. Some say that Badfinger was cursed."

"The Ramones, anything: Do I really have to say anything at all?"

Please stop, Duff! Please! Mercy!

"AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Along with the Saints and Radio Birdman, AC/DC kicked our asses from all the way Down Under!"

Duff McKagan's promise of quality: I really am as dull as I look. Here's proof.

Yeah, that was terrible. What a bad article.

Returning to the subject of the Satellites for a moment, I owned their first album, and also owned the following titles from Scott's list:

david and david - boomtown
stan ridgway - the big heat
jackson browne - lives in the balance (didn't actually own this album, but the title track was on one of the Miami Vice soundtrack albums, the second one I think, which I got for Christmas, and I liked that)
elvis costello - king of america (the only song I liked on this was "Glitter Gulch")
the rolling stones - dirty work (don't think I liked anything on this)
dwight yoakam - guitar, cadillacs, etc, etc
paul simon - graceland
talking heads - true stories

In 1986 I was listening to Motörhead's Orgasmatron and Ted Nugent's Great Gonzos a lot (got both for my 14th birthday), as well as Black Flag and Run-D.M.C.

More from the real Jim Anchower, Duff McKagan. Some comedy value when you grasp that he's absolutely serious when he submits this shit, seeming to think he's quite the talent.

"1999, Prince: Ah yes, the summer of '83 is when I finally realized that I was one sexy
son of a bitch."

"It's Only Rock and Roll, the Rolling Stones: This cassette was the soundtrack to the summer I decided to move from Seattle to Hollywood."

"The Joshua Tree, U2: This record was by all means not just the soundtrack for my summer of '87."

"The Real Thing, Faith No More: The summer this record came out, I was sort of stuck in Chicago ..."

"Young, Loud, and Snotty, the Dead Boys: This must have been the summer of '79, when my young ears were just coming of age ..."

"Live at Budokan, Cheap Trick: Duh!"

"Music of course has so many genres and sub-genres that I could easily keep doing this type of column for the next few years, and we would still only be getting at the tip of the audible iceberg."

"So in the summer of '89, I was in Chicago with Slash."

"OK, now the table was being set. It was a foregone conclusion that bands like Warrant, Poison, and Brittany Fox [sic] had used up and abused their reign of substance-challenged and
retarded pop-rock."

"Korn, self-titled: The first record by Korn was as groundbreaking as anything since Chuck Berry sang "Maybelline."

"Faith No More, The Real Thing: Enough said."

"I have left out many here on purpose. Maybe some of you think my choices are crap. The beauty of music, though, is that we all find inspiration in different presentations and packages. Have fun this week. I've been having fun writing these."

No -- Duff -- it's not your choices we think are crap.

"Mötorhead, Aces of Spades: Uh-huh."

"Judas Priest, British Steel: Yeah? Suck it..."

"Led Zeppelin: The Complete Led Zeppelin: I own the Zep catalogue on vinyl, cassette, and CD ..."

Naw...

"Thin Lizzy, Dedication (the Very Best of Thin Lizzy): On this last tour we did in Europe in June, we had a Thin Lizzy concert DVD on ..."

"The Dead Boys, Young, Loud, and Snotty: "Down in flames, down in flames"!!!!!!!"

"The Beatles, anything: It almost goes without saying."

Then why not spare readers?

"Summer is fast approaching, and parents everywhere are faced with the perennial dilemma: What are we going to do with the kids?"

"In an attempt to flesh out some stories that may one day become a gateway to a larger literary body of work, I'm going to write some short pieces of my own."

In interviews Duff has said he is attending collij in Seattle. Hmmmm.

Duff didn't gradji-ate from high school. This is believable.

Don't know if it goes here or in the metal thread but I got an Ace Frehley solo disc in the mail today called Anomaly and so far there has been a song about Ace coming down from outer space to protect a zombie girl from post-human jerks, a vampire song I think, a tune called "Foxy and Free," and a cover of Sweet's "Fox on the Run." We are now into a lengthy tune called "Genghis Khan."

If this ends up on my top ten for the year I will be super embarrassed but also kind of thrilled.

Also the CD folds into a 3-D pyramid but there's no way to get the disc out if you do that, kind of like the elaborate Spinal Tap Back From the Dead special edition packaging.

(the CD package, not the CD, that WOULD be pretty wild but no)

hahaha--i want!

Anybody (esp George) have any thoughts on either Streetwalkers or the Steve Gibbons Band -- stodgy blues-rock groups with smart reps from pre-punk mid '70s England, led by gruff tough guys said to be at least mildly eccentric? Neither band put a single album in the Billboard 200. Critics in general at the time seem to have found them both passable, for what that's worth (not much I know), but I never gave them much thought til I bought both their debut LPS for $1 each a few weeks back.

Streetwalkers' 1975 self-titled LP really isn't sinking in. Some decent guitar parts ("Crawfish" vaguely reminds me of "Green Eyed Lady" or "Black Magic Woman"), and I like the funky talk box in the opening "Downtown Flyers," but if Roger Chapman had a personality beyond being just another post-Cocker coot, I'm not hearing it. Maybe it kicked in on later albums. Here, the songs just don't seem memorable.

I like Gibbons's 1976 Any Road more (and still need to get to his subsequent Rollin' On, which I also picked up for $1, though supposedly '78's Down In The Bunker is where he peaked), but the Bob Seger comparisons that some critics threw around at the time may have been overstating the issue. Greasy outlaw rocker "Johnny Cool" probably comes closest, and his funk is funkier than Streetwalkers (and his songs more songful -- closer to pub rock I guess), but I still feel like I'm missing something. Assuming something's actually there.

Neither band made Jasper-Oliver's book, fwiw, though Popoff calls Streetwalkers' guitars "riffy and loud" in the appendix of his '70s metal guide (and says he almost considered them heavy enough for the main pages); Christgau calls the debut "Aerosmith for adults," a major exagerration, and later calls the band's music "art-rock-cum-heavy-metal," though that's stretching it from both ends too. (Chapman had been in Family in the early '70s, who I've also never heard much.)

man, went to my brother's apartment in hudson, new york and he had 4 or 5 different issues of andy shernoff's old teenage wasteland zine. so fuckin' cool. and funny. so snotty too. pre-punk fuck you punk! wish i had had time to read them all cover to cover.

love this wiki list of bands who have recorded andy's songs. i haven't heard a lot of them other than the obvious ones:

The Dictators, Master Plan, The Ramones, Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Mary Weiss, Dion DiMucci and The Little Kings, Turbonegro, The Hellacopters, Drivin and Cryin, Baptized By Fire, The Del-Lords, The Toilet Boys, The Young Fresh Fellows, The Nomads, The Untamed Youth, 69 Eyes, The Golden Arms, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Fastbacks, The Vikings, The David Roter Method, The Streetwalkin Cheetahs, Teengenerate, Texas Terri, Tom Clark, The Screaming Tribesman, The Smugglers, The Meatmen, Sex Museum, The Sons of Hercules, Electric Frankenstein, The Prissteens, Park Central Squares, The Alter Boys, The Hudson Falcons, Metal Mike, Tesco Vee, The Mighty Ions, Sismicos, Lawn Vultures, The Statics, The Persuaders, The Scared Stiffs, Furious George, Powder Monkeys, Parasites, Wanda Chrome & The Leather Pharohs, Los Vivos, the Phanthom Fliers, Labanak, The Wretched Ones, Angel Corpus Christi, Rick Blaze & The Ball Busters, Asteroid B612, Electric Frankenstein, Fifi & The Mach III, Jeff Dahl, Shock Treatment

Scott, you should totally start re-printing choice snotty Teenage Gazette excerpts here. I've always heard of it, but never read it!(Did Metal Mike write for that? Seems like he should've, if he didn't.)

Estimate that I've heard songs by about half of those Shernoff-covering bands (some of which I recall being infinitely better than some other ones.) Doubt I've heard many of their actual Shernoff covers, though.

Re Streetwalkers: If you liked Family, you might like them. For me Family was an often iffy
proposition. Hey, early Euro-art, mostly rock format, dramatic but almost no roll.

Streetwalksrs were supposed to be even more rock. What they were was louder. I had Red Card which was the one which have the most obvious interest for people on this thread. Couldn't write songs, definitely not at all like Aerosmith, almost no groove. Loud and oblique with Roger Chapman. Sometimes painful and easy to ignore or immediately take off, unintentionally so.

There was a live album. I have never heard it.

Steve Gibbons I just can't recall. There's a cover of "Tulane" on YouTube and it's pretty Sha Na Na, with a lighter side of pub rock feel.

Thanks George.

xp Teenage Wasteland Gazzete, I mean. (Googling the phrase indicates there's a book PDF you can download? Is that a compilation of fanzine pieces or what?)

Anyway, from that list, I recommend the Nomads to anybody who doesn't know their stuff. And Texas Terri.

BTW, scored a copy of Suzi Quatro's Back to the Drive from 2006. It's produced by Andy Scott of Sweet and with Quatro, it's given all the bells and whistles that came with the original glam recordings.

The title cut is the best song, but "15 Minutes of Fame" cops Slade's "Hey Ho Wish You Well" which in turn cops "Run Runaway" or vice versa. Normally, I detest versions of Neil Young's "Rockin' In the Free Word," but her take on it manages not to suck. She turns it into old pop heavy metal, less ponderous than Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder.

"I Don't Do Gentle" is true to the old glam rock take on Elvis stuff, which was pretty common on her records and those of others. Could easily work on country music video.

Good album, not infrequently great. Startling how she's past fifty but doesn't sound like it.

thanks to my brother i FINALLY got a copy of the Marcus album. happy about that.

right now listening to the first Strapps album on Harvest from 1976. i dig it. especially when they go for full-on mott the hoople. funny songs. even one entitled "rock critic" all about how awful rock critics are. "I'm gonna make it as a rock critic/gonna sling some mud/gonna make it stick/gonna make you suffer for the things that the good lord never gave me!" first song "school girl funk" is funny dirty funky hard rock and it's a keeper.

Yeah, the Strapps were cool. The CD I have of it has some pic of the band in a "hire car" -- as they say in the UK -- with a hooker in between them. There went any sales in the US or placement in stores south of the Mason-Dixon line.

http://waytoyoursoul.blogspot.com/2007/10/strapps-strapps-1976-hard-rock-256.html

Absolutely made for this thread. There's a lot of Streetwalkers floating around in the usual rip off joints, too, not that it matters. (Vicious But Fair and Red Card) Some of it even streamed, reminding me it was everything I thought it wasn't.

http://waytoyoursoul.blogspot.com/2007/12/microwave-dave-american-peasant-2004.html

Ripping off a guy who plays cigarbox guitar live is a bit lowdown.

"Burnin' For You" covered by Shiny Toy Guns in new Lincoln car commercial. You can YouTube it. Sung by this lady:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisely_Treasure

Utter dogshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlDmV2pD9P8

Straight James Williamson showing he's still got some the 'Raw Power' chops. Even playing through a Vox, which really goes back to the unique sound on that Stooges record, considerably different
than Ron Asheton.

There's more here, including Raw Power and Search & Destroy:

http://www.straightjameswilliamson.com/JWvideo.html

"Cock in My Pocket" yet -- technically from Metallic KO. A CD of this show with a better mix and tone would sell a few.

Was curious about a couple of the bands on KZOK: Best Of The Northwest 1981 (Starstream, 1981), which I bought for $3 a few years back. The liner notes claim that "no band has rocked the Northwest harder or longer than Jr. Cadillac", whose "Something Strange" sound like hardassed Bishops/Feelgood-style pub rockabilly with an Elvis-inspired singer; a couple links are below, and apparently they're still around, though the first couple songs I'm hearing on line don't nearly match the one on the compilation.

http://www.jrcadillac.com/

http://www.pnwbands.com/jrcadillac.html

http://www.visionarydance.com/SFS/jrcadillac.html

And "Lookin Out For #1" by Ictus is hard biker boogie with a mean mama singer, probably somewhere in the vicinity of early 1994 or Headpins.

http://www.pnwbands.com/ictus.html

Ictus music career started in Bremerton WA 1980 with a very heavy sound and big production. They recorded their album, Icarus, in Seattle and had a very popular song "The Ice Age Cometh". They played in front of sold out houses in the greater Kitsap areas and Olympia. They then started playing concerts and night clubs in the Seattle market and branched out to the mid west which included Denver, CO.

I like the idea that they were able to make Denver part of the Midwest!

The rest of the comp is okay, but those are the great ones. The Heats are average or better powerpop. Legs do a rocking version of "30 Days In The Hole" with a Joplin style singer who I'm pretty sure doesn't get all the words right; their originals are said to be "hard-driving rock/blues with AC/DC/Trower/early Zeppelin influences," but I haven't heard any.

Also been playing Diesel's Watts In The Tank, also from 1981. Oddball Dutch band, had one (really great) U.S hit with the new wave pop disco metal whatever "Sausalito Summernight," which peaked at #25 that year. No idea what Dutch guys knew about Sausalito, but it worked. The closest band I can think to compare them to is (early '80s) Golden Earring, and I'm pretty sure that's not just because they're from Holland. But they also have a Styx/Queen/Foreigner pomp thing going on here and there, and "Down In The Silvermine" is a total jig-rock (like Horslips maybe? But catchier. Uh...Men Without Hats??) about how down in the mine the days are long but the work is fine. At least I think that's what they say. I doubt the work is actually very fine, though.

"I Hear You Knockin'" -- ala Dave Edmunds -- and "Riot in Cell Block #9" is done ala the Feelgood's on Malpractice. So I guess that gets Jr. Cadillac into pub rock territory. "Too Much Monkey Business" wasn't bad, either. The Edmunds cover is definitely the best I'm hearing. "Sea Cruise" also has the Engli Edmunds pub rock vibe going strong. All of these are from one of their '74 shows at the 'Evergreen Ballroom.'

Oh, and if you were on the New York Times website at the wrong time today. Big 'Oof!'

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/09/new-york-times-sunday-virus-adventure.html

hey, chuck, have you ever heard the 70's Brit band Burlesque? I think you might like them.

I mention them on this thread:

a thread for great bands (and artists) that just didn't...quite...fit.

Don't think I've ever heard Burlesque, Scott, though now I'm curious! And I saw that thread the other day -- looks cool! -- and I have some bands I can add to it if I find a free couple hours somtime, ha...