Rolling Hard Rock 2008 Thread

It's fairly ruling and substantial. Didn't expect much since it came in a truly nondescript cover. There's not a moment of phoning it in on the performance.

I mentioned on the metal thread that the new Ted Nugent live album, Sweden Rocks, is a great roaring power trio album, and (because it's recorded in Sweden) offers an hour of pure rockin' and a minimum of Tedly between-song bullshit.

That is, absolutely zero political content. Plus a 90-second run through "Soul Man" that's kinda amusing, and a very nice eight-minute take on "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang." Only two songs ("Raw Dogs & War Hogs" and "Still Raising Hell") from Craveman, and otherwise nothing post-1980.

It's been delightful having a used record store in walking distance of the house -- Penny Lane across from Pasadena City College. It caters to the PCC and Caltech students. And it's mostly major label, classic rock, punk and some metal. But the bread and butter is Tower Records style but with ten to twelve dollars knocked off the asking price. I can walk down to it a few times a month and browse and almost always find things I'd like to revisit.

Yesterday's:

Girlschool Play Dirty The reissue copy with two "new" recordings done before the death of Kelly Johnson. This was the album they recorded before she left and was produced by Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea of Slade.
They gave it a glam sheen along with drums recorded ala Def Leppard. It's blaring and has a number of songs fans always enjoyed although it didn't do well. They had fans although not enough to continue buying deep into the catalog. And they were less successful domestically although they had a great word-of-mouth rep as a live night out.

"Breaking All the Rules," "Play Dirty," "Surrender," a cover of "20th Century Boy," and "Breakout" -- they liked shouting variations on the word break. Girlschool were always interested in breaking something.

Bonus stuff is the single "1234 Rock n Roll," which they didn't like but which sounds just like The Sirens, or rather The Sirens version of it sounds just like theirs. The redone numbers are "Tush" and "Don't Call It Love" and they don't stink compared with the vintage performances.
It's an easy record to listen to in entirety.

Rory Gallagher Tattoo One of his "must haves." You have to hear "Cradle Rock" as an example of how to turn a power shuffle that mostly is a continuous vamp gets turned into an actual song rather than a jam. Gallagher had a gift for turning R&B figures into gruff hummable tunes limned by guitar explosions. He lined his albums with them, set off by ragtime pieces and folk stuff that always got out of there before you got sick of it. "Just a Little Bit" is a bonus cut from a recent reissue, a live in the studio for a few friends while on US tour that is another extended vamp where Gallagher runs through his considerable catalog of boogie licks old bluesman lyrics at 100 MPH.

If you see this record and like stuff in the white boy blooz (except there's not actually any slow blooz on "Tatto") genre, you should buy it. It refuses to disappoint.

Mudcrutch s/t TP indicated in recent bookend articles in the NY Times/LA Times (hey, lessee how much we can make our articles look like they're joined at the hip from press junket!) that Mudcrutch songs were written real fast. Sometimes in an afternoon. And while that's sometimes OK, in this case it sounds it.

"This is a Good Street" -- 1:34 of TP and pals singin' how it's a good street. (Eyes roll.) Coulda been "This is a Good Sandwich" except two syllables make it hard to fit into the metre.

A lot of it sounds like an old Outlaws record which is OK, too, except no "Green Grass & High Tides." "Crystal River" doesn't really qualify.

"Six Days on the Road" is lightweight Georgia Satellites or bad Faces depending on your age and POV.

Much of this doesn't rock nearly as hard as you would have expected a bar band in Florida to have rocked in the early Seventies. "Lover of the Bayou" works at it a bit.

Major problem is TP phoning it in even when he doesn't realize he's phoning it in. Being as it has Mike Campbell and some other Heartbreaker aces on it, the sounds are ace but the lyrics -- tripe. How many times has Tom done his "I Won't Back Down" shtick? On this it's for "Scare Easy" cuz Tom's "a loser at the top of his game" and y'know, he won't scare easy. One wishes he would break into "y'know it don't come easy" and a cheerful song by Ringo Starr but it's just not gonna happen.

It's all very amiable and laidback summertime, so maybe "Shady Grove" -- which sounds like the Outlaws from their second or third albums -- will be the hit that guarantees he'll do another couple of these. Naturally, it's recorded very classic and gorgeous and no one born doesn't like Mike Campbell on guitar.

"Bootleg Flyer" is the most Heartbreakers-like from the vintage era of the band.

"Ahh, ladies give a drunkard a chance," sings Tom on the last song on the CD. Nope, nope, nope, no girls partying in Florida these days are gonna do that, especially listening to this.

Why, oh why, did I buy this?

PS -- It's not really that awful. It just isn't anything except TP and buds being hayseeds which they probably were definitely determined not to be back when they actually were Mudcrutch. If you liked Pure Prairie League or Asleep at the Wheel records in the 70s-80s, maybe you'd really like Mudcrutch. If you like Shooter Jennings on his most recent, I suppose this is same kind of stuff without the Dire Straits cover.

I'll grant "This is a Good Street" might be a fumbled stab at something drily humorous.

Sheesh, if want someone doing angry hayseed, get the Ian Hunter thing upstream and listen to the songs not mentioned, which are his Bob Dylan imitations.

Sheffield overjoyed to hear new Def Leppard album, <I>Songs from the Sparkle Lounge</I> -- now in stores and lads aren't looking bad in booklet photos.

Now for the bad news.

It's hard to listen to and kicks off with one number which guarantees those of low patience will immediately shitcan it. "Go" is shturm and drang and annoying bass sample and edgy melody, one to make you anxious, anxious for it to be over.

"C'mon C'mon" has glammy handclaps and a Gary Glitter stomp and it still is only meh.

"Cruise Control" is another modern annoyance. Some crap thing made to sound slinky like Prince (except they've no business sounding like Prince and sticking a vocalizing mama into the middle of this for no reason other than they can) and psychedelic in other places or a Steve Stevens solo album, something like that. Awesome wah-wah solo but no one listens to four minutes of this style for such a thing. Hey, wait, it's growing on me....naw, just said that to trick ya.

"Hallucinate" sounds like Def Leppard ought to sound which is like the Donnas sounded on the LP upthread. There's the Rockman arena guitar sound and an honest-to-God obvious hook, the first one on the record at cut number seven. Did the band go into the studio determined not to write songs? Or did they surmise there were too many good songs on their last album of cover versions and they owed their fans a break?

"Only the Good Die Young" has the lads trying to do John Lennon hair metal, which a lot of people like (cf. "Rockford" Cheap Trick) to do and hear. So, generously, this is Enuff 'Z' Nuff and fair.

"Bad Actress" is old-fashioned NWOBHM bludgeon riffola DL-style but there's only two songs left when it finally deigns to arrive.

"Come Undone" is more John Lennon hair metal only now they've overdone it. Def Lep seem to know instinctively when the song is duff because that's when Phil Collen is called upon to stick in an incinerating wah-wah solo that almost saves it. If you listen a couple times and gain familiarity, it does save it. But you gotta like incinerating wah solos for that to happen.

More wah-wah on "Gotta Let It Go" and gratuitous sequenced Trash-80 drum track. Eh. It's art and drama.

Better than Mudcrutch but it's an apples and oranges comparison.

"Love" -- one track I forgot to mention. It's ELO! Or Queen! Or something in between.

Power of Rock and Roll write-up by xhuxk. Is that a good album or what! When Vollmer goes Googling, he'll now probably see it higher. You still need to hear Wild in the Streets -- their best Eighties album.

Dick Destiny & the Highway Kings me -- on YouTube from way back in '89 in a Bethlehem slum.

Phil's exactly right on Nuge's live set in Sweden. Good trio, excellently mastered -- not too hot so it distorts unnaturally. Much reminiscent of the trio that played on Tooth, Fang & Claw. Best tunes are "Snakeskin Cowboy" -- its sinister riff is superbly turned in. Rendition of yelping "Hey Baby" with someone imitating Dereck St. Holmes.
And the band evens put the vintage background vocals back into "Stranglehold." Ted's bread and butter is live work so as compared to his last live one, Full Bluntal Nugity, this is shorter but not inferior. FBN has the Ted's Michigainiac in the US shtick, the latter doesn't except for the man telling the Swedes they must have a bit of Detroit in them.

And the 2007 reissue of Robin Trower's Bridge of Sighs is worthy if you need a remaster. Includes a BBC recording of the band with two superb cuts -- "Confessin' Midnight" and "Gonna Be More Suspicious" -- which are as funky as heavy Seventies hard rock ever got. This was one of Trowers specialties, perhaps a carryover from The Paramounts, his old R&B band. Can't say enough about those two tunes outside of the excellence of the original album as a whole. It's his best made better by addition of some history.

Plus, the singer -- Jimmy Dewar. He could have been singing a phone book and it would have sounded cool.

Ha, that Dick Destiny clips rules, George.

As does Nantucket's Long Way To The Top, from 1979, which I bought for $1 or two last year and only just finally got around to concentrating on this week. Weird that they opened the album with a cover of a three-year-old AC/DC song, and even named the album after it. Maybe they were banking on U.S. fans not knowing it was a cover -- had High Voltage even come out in the States at that point? It never charted; Let There Be Rock went to #154, Powerage #133, and by '79, of course, AC/DC were picking up Stateside steam after Highway to Hell went #17. Nantucket never wound up charting an album themselves, though, which surprises me; I swear I remember them getting some late '70s AOR airplay in Detroit, though maybe I'm confusing them with the band New England. (Weirdly, Nantucket apparently were based in North Carolina, even despite the lobster-fishing theme of the LP cover -- at least, that's what their address on the LP is.) Second side gives me a sort of first-Loverboy album vibe -- some hard pop-rock, some tentative hints at reggae rhythms that don't cut into the rock, freebie hidden acapella closing cut.

Definitely liking Nantucket more than the double best-of Rainbow LP I bought for $1 over the weekend, though maybe they just need to grow on me. Good guitar parts, obviously, plenty of skill involved, but they still sound cold and clinical and stupid. Probably I just need to spend more time with it.

Puhdys' 10 Wilde Jahre -- Metal Mike sent me this a year or two ago, and didn't play it until this week. George had pointed out on another thread that they're in that Jasper/Oliver book. Anyway, judging from this (best of?) LP, they definitely had their own sound -- fairly hard-rocking, intermittently pompish, German schlager music, or something. Though, for all I know, there were lots of German bands doing the same thing in the '70s, and I've just never heard them. Weirdly, the other Pudhys LP Metal Mike sent me, Rock n Roll Music, is all blue-jeaned, English language cover of not remotely obscure '50s rock'n'roll classics -- not sure yet how much asskick they get out of those, whether they wanted to be Stackwaddy (who, um, I'm still not sure I've ever heard) or just Sha Na Na.

Now, my Billboard review of the new White Lion:

WHITE LION
Return of the Pride
Producers: Mike Tramp, Claus Langeskov
Airline
Release Date: Apr. 29
Toward the tail-end of the ‘80s, the calmly cracking campfire tone of singer Mike Tramp – born in Denmark, and brandishing a blond mane worthy of his band’s name – set White Lion apart from the hair-metal pack. Back now with a new, keyboard-augmented lineup, Tramp’s best when he’s most ambitious-- “Battle of Little Big Horn” and the eight-minute “Sangre De Cristo” are complex compositions, exuding a spooky history-book buzz. “Live Your Life,” “Gonna Do It My Way,” and “Finally See The Light” are pristine hard pop, made anthemic with Thin Lizzy changes and choruses hooked like the Who or Bay City Rollers. Jamie Law’s powerchords thrash loud enough to compensate for intermittent moments of mush. And while live reprises of a pair of 20-year-old hits feel extraneous, the Bad Company riff opening “When The Children Cry” is a neat touch. As hair-metal comebacks this spring go, more fun than Whitesnake’s for sure. (C.E.)

New Night Ranger CD ends with two acoustic updates of their old hits, too, a sort of Zep-folked "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" being more useful than "Sister Christian," oddly enough. Rest of the album has some good metal and pop-rock on it; not sure how much.

It's spelled "Puhdys," by the way, and they're apparently from EastGermany. (And they're more a rock band than schlager band, if I wasn't clear. Like, hard rock with schlager rhythms maybe. Though maybe that just comes from singing in German. I bet lots of bier was consumed at their shows.)

(Wait, did Stackwaddy actually do '50s covers, or am I confusing them with Showaddywaddy or somebody?)

Stackwaddy tended to do covers of tunes by Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck and blues/R&B men although I also did "The Girl from Ipanema." They also tended to retitle them like the totally awesome "Meat Pies Have Come but the Band Ain't Here Yet." Showaddydaddy did the 50's rockabilly Sha-Na-Na-like thing. Stylistically, the bands were polar opposites. Showaddydaddy had hits. The Stackwaddies were a John Peel discovery and didn't.

Nantucket's lobster thing was amusing, having more to do with their noreaster whaler name. Long Way to the Top was all right. The album just before it was better, having a more natural less produced southern pop and boogie sound. Recall I reviewed the reissue for the Voice with Ten Benson's release of a few years ago. They had a song called "Girl You Blew A Good Thing" which backed off on an obvious opportunity to go on about oral sex which, naturally, a southern band of more gravity -- like Blackfoot, would have taken fully by the horns.

Hah, ERROR! Stackwaddy did "The Girl from Ipanema," I only had it on 45. I think everyone had a copy of it at the time. Like "Sukiyaki" and "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport," it was one of the most popular songs in America during its time period.

And any band, like Stackwaddy, which entitle an album Bugger Off! in the early Seventies -- well, you know what they sound like. Umproduced brutal, sometimes clumsy but always entertaining, hard rock for drunken louts.

Funnily enough, there's a song on the new Montgomery Gentry album where they use "The Girl of Ipanema" (mentioned by name, not referenced musically) as the sort of the music that would be played at some pretentious, prissy wine-and-cheese-and-crackers party where they wouldn't want to go. So they leave and head where they can hear some Skynyrd instead.

(And I still have my own "Girl From Ipanema" 45 regardless, though. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I have nothing against cheese and crackers.)

Damn, the Grand Funk Railroad Live 1971 Tour cd that came out a couple of years back is awesome. I just got it. This is NOT the same band that did Some Kind of Wonderful and shit like that. Mel Shacher is an absolute monster on bass, and reels Farner back in when he's about to fall off the stage (figuratively) which happens quite often. What I would have given to have been sitting on the dugout for that Shea show. But I was only one year old.

Yeah, I bought that when it first came out, having only heard a few of their songs on the radio. GFR seem to have been underrated at the time, and are mostly ignored now, but I like 'em a lot.

Well Bill, you'd really dig the original Grand Funk Live Album CD, too. The two are similar, done about a year apart.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/funk.JPG

From my blog a couple years ago:

Funk's success sent Dave Marsh of CREEM magazine into an apoplectic rage in its December 1970 issue. In a now notorious rant about "Live Album," Marsh wrote "Are [Grand Funk] as slow and doped out of their wits as their audience?"

In another paragraph, Marsh growls that Funk were first popular in the South, "down in the very heartland of honk." His objection seems to be that Funk were little more than copyists of Cream, and the southerners didn't like Cream but were fans of Grand Funk because they were of like minds -- stupid and blowing their brains out on marijuana.

But others had proclaimed Funk monsters, most notably Metal Mike Saunders, who would continue to do so in print through the early '70's. In a long review ("A Brief Survey of the State of Metal Music Today") in a 1973 issue of Phonograph Record Magazine, Saunders stated a "risible chasm" had opened up between what was considered Good Music -- the stuff pumped by the rock critic mainstream -- "and what the kids were actually listening to." It was obvious, he wrote, with regards to Grand Funk and Black Sabbath.

Live Album, which reached number five in the States with no obvious airplay, showed Funk at its metallic best and worst, said Saunders. For Phonograph Record, it was fifty percent good, fifty percent "awful." In Fusion in '72, "The entire first side [of the four-sided double LP] is crass, energetic and rocking, until the very end of 'In Need'. "

======
Always been a favorite of mind. It's raw and has amusing stuff like TNUC (spell it backwards, haw-haw-haw). It blares and shrieks and thuds, often all at the same time.

Live Album and Phoenix are the only two Grand Funk discs between On Time and We're An American Band that I don't have.

The critical swipes at GFR are kind of hilarious, and mostly wrong. I don't understand Marsh's criticism "slow and doped out". The live stuff is incredibly energetic, and songs like some of their songs like "Rock and Roll Soul" and "Footstompin Music" get your blood pumping, big time. There's almost a motown influence, but amped up on steroids.

I love Live Album too. Great band.

I hate to keep bringin up relics from the '70s, but I've been listening, after a long time, to Montrose's first album. What a fucking killer this is.

True. Followed by one of the most baffling fall-offs in hard rock, perhaps caused by Ronnie Montrose's assorted idiosyncracies. Sammy left, then Bill Church, and it just wasn't the same band.

Some of the later stuff collected on the Very Best of Montrose is pretty good.

Gorge, that BOC bootleg cited above, with the Yardbirds in the title, is that available anywhere?

New DVD in this morning's mail: ZZ Top - Live From Texas. Recorded last year, which doesn't matter a bit because I saw them on the NYC stop of that tour and they tore the walls down. Set list: "Got Me Under Pressure," "Waitin' For The Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago," "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," "Pin Cushion," "Cheap Sunglasses," "Pearl Necklace," "Heard It On The X," "Just Got Paid," "Rough Boy," "Blue Jean Blues," "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Sharp Dressed Man," "Legs," "Tube Snake Boogie," "La Grange," "Tush." Other than the two back-to-back slow ones, you can't fuck with that at all.

It appears to be out of print. Also called "Live 1972," people want 50 bucks for it used on Amazon.

Thanks Gorge.

Great looking ZZ Top DVD, that set list is killer.

Steve Stevens solo album, Memory Crash is fair to good. Bought it after reading an interview with him in the new Guitar Player which is about the only music journalism rag that hasn't succumbed to fads and a relentless publish-according-to-the-pr-sked practices employed by everyone else. They don't review many records per issue but when they do the choices are as likely to have been out for weeks or months as advances. 'Course, it's a trade mag but it doesn't put heavy metal guitarists on the cover every issue like its rival, Guitar World, which now comes in a plastic bag so that you have to buy the CD of promotional crapware they include with it. Refreshingly, Guitar Player is sort of like Mojo in that it hews to classic rock, jazz and roots music, so one can read about Wes Montgomery alongside Steve Howe.

Anyway, Stevens' record is rock instrumental, except for two tunes, a cover of Trower's "Day of the Eagle" and one his own compositions. Doug Pinnick furnishes vocals for the former and he's just OK, no Jimmy Dewar, not even close. Stevens can do Trower, though. "Hellcats Take the Highway" slips into an old Yardbirdsy-riff and about half of the rest of it doesn't make you reach for the eject. A good batting average for a limited appeal rock record.

That natural caveat applies in that it sounds like a band waiting for the singer to take the stage. Because the singer fails to show isn't always a bad thing, particularly in this case.

I interviewed Stevens for the current issue of Metal Edge talking about that record. He talked about his interest in flamenco, which shows up in some of the pieces on the disc.

His flamenco guitar work on the Juno Reactor song "Pistolero" is pretty great, totally makes that song. And I actually really liked Memory Crash. I don't usually bother with instrumental wank albums, but I do like that Stevens actually wrote songs and not just solos. I've even revisited it after I turned in my review.

I promise I'm done discussing 70s hard rock acts, but Mott the Hoople came out with something last year called "Fairfield Halls 1970" and it simply has to be heard to be believed. It's apparently two concerts were they were the opening act (one in England in '70, one in Sweden in '71) but I imagine whoever the headliner was for these shows probably felt like packing it in after hearing Mott completely annihilate the audience for these two shows. These sound like they were recorded yesterday, and are about as heavy as you can get. Two simply ferocious performances from pre-glam Mott.

In Croydon, it was Free. Actually, Free -- I think -- turned the Croydon show into a live album, too. The original domestic release of Free Live wasn't that hot but the Free box set included the entire show with a bit of a hotter mix. It was a good show, too, but Mott and Free were a genuine mismatch, no matter how one likes Paul Rodgers and Koss. There just isn't any comparison in terms of attack and velocity.

i need those mott shows. i need all live mott. damn, i'm poor though. well, it'll be around. i have a great vinyl boot of a mott show from 73. i think it's 73. live in amerikkka somewhere. when i'm drunk i want mott the hoople tattoos. although i could totally dig a free tattoo too.

Yeah, those Mott shows sound like they'd be awesome.

I got that ZZ Top DVD in the mail, too, but given my history of never getting around to watching promising music DVDs that came in the mail even five years ago, I'm not sure when I'll actually see it.

To bring this thread more up to date, here are some hard-rockish albums I've liked this year that I don't think anybody has mentioned; good chance I'll get around to writing about lots of them somewhere eventually; if not, maybe I'll say more sometime:

Legless – Finding Mr. Perfect (leglesstheband.com)
The Tonic Rays – The Tonic Rays (thetonicrays.com ’07)
Teacher’s Pet – Teacher’s Pet (Smog Veil)
Crash Street Kids – Transatlantic Suicide (Hot City Recording Company)
Black Diamond Heavies – A Touch Of Someone Else’s Class (Alive)
Other Fools – 12 More Lies (Of)
Home Blitz – Home Blitz (Gulcher ’07)
Killola – I Am The Messer (Killola/Our)
Jet Fuel – Give It Hell/Straight For 88/Dynamite Rock Machine (unlabeled CD-R)
The Donnas – Bitchin’ (Purple Feather/Redeye Incorporated ’07)
The Backsliders – You’re Welcome (backsliders.com)
Reckless Kelly – Bulletproof (Yep Roc)
The Mother Truckers – Let’s All Go To Bed (Funzao)
Montgomery Gentry – Back When I Knew It All (Columbia)
Legless – 13 Killer Tracks (leglesstheband.com ’06)
The Jacknives – Cobra Combat Boots (myspace.com/thejacknives ‘07)
The Architects – Vice (Anodyne)
6 FtHick -- On The Rocks (Spooky)
Night After Night – Unreleased Album (unlabeled CD-R)

reissues
The A’s – The Best Of The A’s (Young Philadelphians Music) [mentioned by George above, actually)
Skafish – What’s This?: 1976-1979 (289)
Silver Apples – Silver Apples (Phoenix)
Donnie Iris – Back On The Streets/King Cool (American Beat ’07)
Demian – Demian (Fallout)
Continental Crawler – The Anthology 1977-79: Cars, Cards And Questionable Women (Not Aloud)

(Actually, that Teacher's Pet album is older stuff too -- late '70s Ohio punk rock -- but only a couple songs on it ever actually got released before.)

And here's what I wrote about the new LOcal H album in Spin (before any editing that might've happened):

Local H
12 Angry Months
Shout! Factory
3 stars

A dozen years and one drummer removed from their copacetic Nirvanabee nugget “Bound For The Floor,” Scott Lucas’s Illinois-bred bubblegrunge duo are still loudest and prettiest when hitching powerchords to powerpop. This time, though, there’s a concept: One title per month, all revolving around an ugly breakup. The song cycle kicks off spaghetti Zepstern and winds down to eight grandiose minutes under the milky way. You start out rooting for Lucas when his ex keeps his Pretenders album. But the more mean-spirited he gets, the more his melodies fail him.

(Siver Apples -- late '60s proto-Suicide synth duo -- not really hard-rockish; didn't mean to include them. Still kinda like it though. And it's on vinyl!)

And the Backsliders' website (hard-pop Pretenders-like Dallas band w/ girl who used to be in Vibrolux, who I never heard, is actually at the link below):

http://thebacksliders.com/

The only one on your list I've heard is the Donnas album. The publicist for Local H kept trying to get me to put them in Metal Edge, without success.

"i need those mott shows. i need all live mott. damn, i'm poor though."

I'm more than happy to burn.

Excellent reissue of Mahogany Rush's IV and World Anthem LPs on double-CD. Frank Marino was like Robin Trower, only somewhat less successful. Sold less records but had bigger clout in management -- Leber/Krebs -- which put MR on all the mid-70's big arena tours with Ted Nugent and Aerosmith.

Trower's more of a straight blues and R&B man. Marino was slightly more psychedelic, spacey and hippie. He had a thing about peace and love, writing World Anthem to be sung at the Olympic Games in different languages, a bunch of which the lyrics are printed in.

The funk raises its head on IV. "Jive Baby" sounds like Graham Central Station (so do a couple other tunes on this, namely "Moonwalk") but "The Answer" sounds like a song left off Trower's For Earth Below and that's a compliment. "Dragonfly" is also sinuous and hard at the same time. "Little Sexy Annie," a guitar explosion and double speed sounds like the basis for Rick Derringer's "Across the Universe." They were in the arenas at the same time, so it's a possibility. Frank Marino was never much of a singer, though, often sounding like the "cool cats" you heard on the tracks selected for blaxploitation B-movies. However, then the heavy wah-wah guitar would come down, hence the big Hendrix comparisons.

Not much of a pop songwriter, to the regret of his bandmates who wish in liner notes he would have written more glitzy material.

Mahogany Rush now almost always an acquired taste although lots knew who they were in the mid-Seventies.

Before the live album, which came after these two, IV was probably Mahogany Rush's best LP.

Ya gotta hear the guy shouting "Moonwalk! Funky!" -- all the lyrics apparently thought necessary for the tune of the same. Plus a mini-opera, "IV (The Emperor)" is included.

Weed's [i]Weed</>! This is one I'm sure skott has on old Brain vinyl. SPV reissue, part of "revisiting Krautrock" part of catalog.

Ken Hensley stiffening up a Kraut four-piece and lo if it doesn't sound a bit like the first Uriah Heep LP, even down to David Byron-esque vocals. "Slowin' Down" is Uriah Heep-shuffle boogie, only a hair slower with Hensley on slide.

"Weed" is seven minute instrumental spazz-out (even includes loving cop from "Moby Dick"), the kind every band had to have in 70 or so. The band's name doesn't get over how hard it sounds, crashing and crunching on half the tunes, including one Heep-ish ballad and a more glossy piece, "Before I Die," to show they weren't entirely cavemen.

If you'd just bought Heep's first album and you snagged this because of the cover, you wouldn't be disappointed by your spec buy once you got home. But that would've been in 1970. All bets off now.

I like that Donnas album! But then, I've liked all their albums. I wholeheartedly support their desire to become Def Leppard, though.

Speaking of Def Leppard, the Man Raze album (Phil Collen w/ his former bandmate in early '80s NWOBHM glamsters Girl Simon Laffey plus Pistol Paul Cook on drums) is way better than I expected it to be. (I'd say more, but I've got an assignment to review it. I still never heard this year's actual Def Lep album, but judging from George's comments above, I can't imagine that this thing isn't a whole lot better.)

New Night Ranger still rocking me too, by the way.

If there's one thing I want from Def Leppard, its sparkle.

"Demian – Demian (Fallout)"

why does the only label in the world that i am actively boycotting have to friggin' put this out!!! still want a vinyl copy though. i'm just too cheap to pay the 100+ ebay price for it.

i could go for a demian/bubble puppy tattoo too.

here is a picture of two of my favorite hard rock bands together in the same room:

http://home.austin.rr.com/david709/parlament.jpg

http://www.dickdestiny.com/bitchinsmall.JPG
Still on my list of 2008 plays. Better than Goddo, even. (Obscure joke for the old-timers.)

http://www.dickdestiny.com/weedsmall.JPG

Actually, an even better album than I indicated upthread. A good amount of thud and when they have nothing to sing, they don't. Better'n Head Over Heels, Bull Angus, Black Pearl. Maybe about even with Bang's first album. Not really ahead of its time, just right on time. If you remember Heavy Equipment or Leaf Hound or Toad from the old thud rock threads, and liked them, you'd probably like Weed.

Saw Heavy Load doc on IMC. If you don't have cable this may mean nothing to you. Unless you're from England.

Heavy Load = punk rock quintet with three mentally handicapped members. They do covers. At the beginning of the doc, they sounded like Half Japanese. By the end of ninety minutes, a span that covered the filmmaker's two years with the band, they put on a steady performance where one could actually recognize the songs. Covered Kylie Minogue for a B-side of their "Stay Up Late" single/campaign combo. Background: Single made to change the habit of support workers for the handicapped who leave duty early in the evening mandating that the handicapped always have to go home and to bed at 9:30. Disruptive of Heavy Load gigs in which half the audience would leave mid-set because the support care said it was time to go home.

Recommended by Wreckless Eric who thought their lead singer had charisma. True, to an extent which is an acquired taste. You have to have an enthusiasm for senseless random cursing as a vocal style.

A charming film, with everybody very warm-hearted and sincere.

Picked up recent Japanese paper sleeve mini-double LP reissue of John Lennon's Sometime in New York City from '72. Didn't much like it in '72 when I bought the vinyl expecting something middle of the road. I was listening to Foghat's debut and, well...

Anyway, it's a decent old-timey hard rock record. Studio side has Lennon and Yoko Ono singing songs of socialism to backing by Elephant's Memory, who were kind of retro in a classic Sha-Na-Na's backing band type of way, complete with a sax player. Yoko One sings a couple solo cuts, easily skippable. She does actually try to sing on the studio side.

She does backing on Lennon's track which are rock 'n' roll. "New York City" and "Attica State" are fair examples. The former is the best with Lennon going on about his local view of Manhattan with John Peel singing about the Pope smoking dope. Must have been about the time Lennon had something to do with Peel's "The Pope Smoke Dope" record, too. "John Sinclair" is country blues on national steel, demanding the subject be set free. Plus there's a really boring tune about Angela Davis.

Live side is from two gigs, one at the Lyceum and at one at the Fillmore East. Lyceum date includes eight great minutes of "Cold Turkey" and 16 horrible ones of Ono screaming on "Don't Worry Kyoko."

For the Fillmore East tunes, Lennon and Ono are joined by Frank Zappa and the Mothers. According to one of my Zappa biographies, Lennon and Zappa had made a gentlemen's agreement over dinner to get together for this, record it and have equal claim to the royalties. Lennon put it out as "Live Jam" -- the second "free" LP with "Sometime." It starts with the Mothers backing him on "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)" which is advertised as raw rock and roll, ala Cavern Club Beatles. Ono starts screaming during it but it's mixed a bit low so it sounds sort of like a nutty fan. Zappa delivers a great solo.

Then the Mothers go into the instrumental meat of "King Kong." Lennon and Ono renamed this as "Jamrag" and "Scumbag" for the NYC album. The playing is par for the course Mothers, pretty fierce hard jazzy R&B rock fusion. Ono screams through all of it. Only now it sounds like an insane fan more than the savage annoyance most took it for decades ago. It's amusing and even Zappa must have thought so during the performance as he intrpoduces "Scumbag" as a song which the audience can sing along to. What's on the record is Lennon singing "Scumbag" while the Mothers trade licks. It rocks OK. Phil Spector, who produced "Sometime" for Lennon mixed out the Mothers singing "Put Yoko in the scumbag" during the performance. Zappa restored it in 1992 for his "Playground Psychotics" regard, when he finally took the opportunity to re-release the Fillmore East performance.

Then there's eight minutes of Yoko screaming again at the end, which can be skipped, being what Zappa puckishly called "A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono."

The Apple remaster from a couple years ago remove "Scumbag" and "Jamrag," probably out of courtesy to the Zappa estate. If you see this on vinyl cheap, it's worth a spec buy. I'm more than happy with it.

The other thing I've been listening to a lot is Illimite by Telephone, a thirty year retrospec issue of the best of the band with one live disc. Telephone was France's best-selling rock 'n' roll band from the late Seventies to the mid-Eighties. The band sang everything in France and never made a dent anywhere but in their home country. The live work is crushing, taken from a variety of gigs. Two very good, very Stone-sy guitar players and a hot rhythm section who definitely could lay down the backbeat. Maybe more later, definitely a high point of summer listening ...

Actually, Telephone sang everything in French -- haw (?!) --rather than just in France, which they did, too. And Frank Zappa did a funny song called "In France," featuring his standard mix of toilet and sex humor.