Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

queen were huge here. queen are still huge here.

queen cracked the code. they got millions of teenage boys to buy their albums AND millions of teenage girls. if you can do that, the world is your oyster.

Hah-ham, pfunk, "Flagpole of Love." You may not believe this but it sounds almost exactly
like the old Christ Child LP we used to talk about infrequently on here. That's a good thing.

xhuxk, you'll laugh at that one.

It also has that Macc Lads, actually more Pork Dukes, filth punk flavor.

Ok i'll give this album a go then.

Here's one for chuck because he went through a bunch of bad disco albums and such.

Sean Delaney, who was a big part of Aucoin management, and Aucoin's boyfriend, sez here on Wiki:

"After releasing the solo album, Delaney formed a band in 1979 called Skatt Bros."

Which I seem to recall being a joke and very gay name just about what you think. Did you
ever hear or have Skatt Bros. album?

Not only have I heard it and owned it, George, I own it now, and have at times counted it as one my favorite albums in my collection. Maybe still do. No joke. Last time I played it was, oh, maybe three weeks ago.
I like it so much that, a couple months ago, I almost bought a second copy that I saw for a buck; probably should have -- whichever copy was less clean would've made a wonderful gift idea. Anyway, the album is Strange Spirits, Casablanca 1979; Richie Fontana (from Piper) on drums; rest of the lineup, besides Delaney (on keybs) goes Pieter Sweval bass, Richard Martin-Ross guitar, David Andez lead guitar, Craig Krampf also drums (plus five "auxilary musicians" -- not sure whether they ever existed as a live entity; the overlapping credits suggest not every cut was the same "band".) Probably either as "rock" a disco album or as "disco" a rock album as ever existed. And yeah, gay gay gay -- like, Leather Nun Accept Turbonegro leather bar gay (think they were marketed as the "metal" Village People or something), as the back cover below indicates even more than the front cover. Best song, "Walk The Night," an Andez/Fontana writing credit, sounds basically how Wax Trax leatherman fascist industrial fetish metal disco (KMFDM or whoever) should have sounded, almost a decade early -- Michael Freedberg, who I first heard of them from, suggested it for the disco-metal appendix of Stairway's second edition, which is the only place they're listed I believe. Scariest/Most hilariously wtf hook: "I got a ROD beneath my coat/It's gonna RAM right down your throat/Hooo-ah!!!" Other two most awesome cuts (both credited to Delaney-Sweval) would be "Life At The Outpost" ("give your love to a cowboy man/He's gonna love ya hard as he can, can") and "Midnight Companion" (almost-county ballad, about disguising one's self as a trucker to meet bikers to spend the night with). Those three songs are unbelievably catchy, though they really don't sound much like each other, even if they all come from the same place. Again, I have no idea the extent to which the lyrics were serious, though supposedly "Walk The Night" became a fairly sizable leather-bar hit regardless. Anyway, those three cuts could carry the LP alone, as far as I'm concerned. Rest is fine, sometimes much better than fine, but what what kind of caught me by surprise last time I played it is how a few of the cuts really predated the kind of dance-metal AOR people like, say, Aldo Nova (assuming there was anybody else "like" Aldo Nova) were hitting with three years later.

And now I need to clearly track down Biggus Diccus.

Rough boys on the front cover:

http://www.richiefontana.com/images/SkattAlbum2.jpg

And back:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IBigK-nP7zw/S0KZLxcGzOI/AAAAAAAAItk/ckM04QN_1Qk/s400/Skatt+Bros-+Strange+Spirits-Back.jpg

Biggus Diccus is a free download from their website, Chuck. Don't know if there's a physical copy available yet.

Gotcha. Will check website. Soon.

xp: "county" = "country." (Made the exact same typo tonight on the Rolling County I mean Country thread, oddly enough.)

Sweval was the bass player for Starz. Like Delaney, he died a few years ago. There's the "Aucoin' logo on the back.

The album and back cover is such an ott straight outta cruising ha-ha-ha moment. That's Delaney on the far right on the front cover, BTW.

Sadly, the great interior obviously not ready and waiting for heavy metal Village People with cultural joke name. But Casablanca was certainly the right label.

Chuck could take a week in metal club and choose it as one of the albums. It cant be any worse than aldo's picks this week.

All of you are welcome to take a week and choose 3 albums while we all listen to them and discuss it.

Take a listen to "Walk the Night" on Youtube, pfunk. You'll immediately grasp why it was big in gay dance clubs in Manhattan and why it charted, as a result. But much outrage might transpire.

It makes me laugh, though, and apparently they got an entry in Jasper & Oliver although I don't have it to check right near the desk.

Leather Nun, intentionally or not, definitely recycled their shtick later on.

Just had to report, best news item of the weekend:

Herculean hot dog eater Takeru Kobayashi was released from jail Monday morning and said he felt empty inside.

"I'm really hungry. I wanted to eat hot dogs," he said as he walked out of Brooklyn Criminal Court after being arraigned on charges of storming the stage at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island Sunday.

Kobayashi, 32, was released without bail on charges of trespassing, resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration.

The one-time champion said he'd only been able to munch on a bologna sandwich and a glass of milk while in central booking following his arrest.

His absence left the door wide-open for his arch nemesis, Joey Chestnut, to storm to his fourth consecutive title with 54 dogs in 10 minutes.

Still wearing a "Free Kobi" T-shirt as he left court, Kobayashi said he'd only tried to get on stage to congratulate "his buddies" and to "prove himself."

I just did. I dont know anything about gay clubs but I can definitely see why Chuck likes it!

haha wtf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34sqrLWF_tQ&feature=related

better quality i think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fujgQXeTPmk

Priceless. Seeing the bass player from Starz in that video -- and you have to recall his pics on the first two Starz albums as a scary tough guy -- is hilarious. Better song than anything on the third Starz album, too.

Hut! Shoot 'em up! Hut! Ride!

Apparently that song was a huge top 10 hit in Australia. Wonder if any ilx aussies know it?

Hmm, Wiki says they actually put out a second album -- Rico and the Ravens, 1981 -- only in Australia, too. But their main Wiki entry is misleading; says "In 1980, the band released Walk the Night (written by Fontana and Andez[4]), which has been widely popular, reaching #9 in the Billboard charts and #1 on various national charts"; perhaps that might refer to Down Under, too? Because the band charted no albums or singles at all on the Billboard 200 or Hot 100 in the States; not sure about disco/dance chart. (Also, fwiw, I was under the impression they had an entry in Jasper/Oliver, too but I'm not seeing them in there -- They do get a mention in the Piper entry, though.) (Finally, guess I slightly misquoted "Walk The Night" above. But I got the gist right.)

Singles

Life At The Outpost (1980) #7 Australia

Bob Probert, a strapping forward for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks who became one of hockey’s most accomplished brawlers but struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, died Monday in Windsor, Ontario.....When Probert traded punches with an opposing player at the Red Wings’ Joe Louis Arena, the singer Pat Benatar’s voice would be heard over the sound system: “Hit me with your best shot! Fire away!” T-shirts with Probert’s caricature, reading “Give Blood. Fight Probie,” were hot items at the souvenir stands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/sports/hockey/07probert.html

"Prog On The Prairie: Midwestern Bands Roll Over Beethoven" (me, on Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Starcastle, Shooting Star -- with mere mentions of Styx and Head East, since they don't have any music on emusic):

http://www.emusic.com/features/spotlight/2010_201007-essay-prog.html

this is for gorge:

http://www.myspace.com/mooseboner

Huh, REO Speedwagon and Kansas on eMusic. I used to write for eMusic. Back then, like everyplace else, it had the reflexive subconscious antipathy to letting anyone write about hard rock, even if it was in their catalog. So if I wanted to write about the Screaming Lord Sutch catalog I had to find it hidden in their only Jimmy Page anthology.

Nice job. You'd like Shooting Star's Silent Scream LP. It grew on me, was produced by Ron Nevison which gave the guitar a razor-like crunch on some tunes. But -- overall -- it has this really optimistic mid-Eighties young-adults-having-fun vibe. This was, of course, well before anyone actually knew that Reagan was setting them up for a grim maturity. And now I bet they're all Tea-Baggers and Glenn Beck worshippers.

Boy, REO on eMusic though. That's almost as surprising as something like Tuscaloosa Ann
suddenly discovering electric guitars not played by Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain.

My latest Ted watching:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/07/08/infame-the-new-fame-for-ted/

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/07/06/then-now-well-theres-always-hannity-and-cursing-the-obama-administration/

great write-up, chuck.

do you have the second fireballet album? i can't remember. i like it better than their first album. first album noteworthy for their prog rendition of night on bald mountain. second album is more fun. don't know if they were from the mid-west though.

http://strider01.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/gayles1.jpg

Boy, don't remember seeing that album cover. Great find, scott.

As for xhuxk's eMusic write-up, did you get to any of the Starcastle albums past the debut? I never did.

I'd agree with what you said re Genesis and the US comparisons. Yes, a bit of a different matter. There was
a good deal of crunch -- intentional or a side-effect of Steve Howe and Chris Squire in tandem -- on Fragile and Close to the Edge. Which may have been Offord's production bringing it out. Anyway, you can hear the mayhem real good on the first live album.

Ironically, the guy who was their loudest guitarist, Tonyt Banks, got sacked after two albums. And he really didn't get to show that until the Flash records which Christgau disparaged, in a way that was accidentally hilarious,
considering how things turned out.

Three and a half decades late, the Dictators get some moolah/recognition for something from Go Girl Crazy!, the lowest selling album in or close in Epic's history. (Not really, anymore, though.)

The Angels are using the Dictators' cover of "California Sun" in their local TV ads. It being soCal, that hits a pretty big audience, more than the population of most states.

i like starcastle. have heard all or most of their stuff. but, to be honest, none of their stuff really sticks with me for long. i mean, i don't want to play their albums over and over.

I never did get past their debut album, just like George said. And I definitely see his point about Yes -- The guitars could get loud on occasion, and I've always loved Fragile. Just don't hear them ever having the meat-and-taters, occasionally boogie-leaning bar-band sludge quotient that most of the cornbelt bands I wrote about could get to now and then (not Starcastle, obviously -- who, on that first album anyway, sound like Yes with all the crunch depleted.) But maybe I should go back and listen to that first live album again.

Right, you'd be hard pressed to find anything remotely shuffling, one-four-five or 12 bar bloozoid in any of those Yes
albums.

I tried to vote in the ILM poll on Mutt Lange-less albums of best quality after ML stopped producing an act. But ILM choked me with an error msg and presumably threw out my choice, so I'm talking about it here.

AC/DC's Flick of the Switch was an easy pick. An alternative would be Michael Stanley's Heartland which had their biggest hit. Plus, the album Lange produced wasn't very good. It was before he was "Mutt", still going by Robert John Lange.

As with Savoy Brown's Savage Return which I have repeatedly pimped here. One of the most uncharacteristic albums in the Kim Simmonds/SB catalog, it has pre-Mutt Mutt sharpening his metal chops. And it is a great album although Simmonds didn't even boost any of it when touring after release. Saw the band in Reading, going out expressly to hear that sound, and none of it was in evidence. So it was almost all Mutt and Simmonds wasn't quite ready for that. Although he'd try again with Rock 'n' Roll Warriors and a live album at the same time, to much less effect.

A funny addition to the list is the Outlaws In the Eye of the Storm which was crap. But the Lange-produced album before it was crap, too. The Outlaws had peaked by their second album and their only lasting legacy, despite twenty minute live versions of "Green Grass & High Tides" was "Ghost Riders in the Sky," which wasn't even very big but actually the second album after Robert John did a job for them.

And xhuxk xould probably xhew over the rest of the list -- which is interesting if you're obscurantist hard rock like me.

Why Simmonds tried again with Rock 'n' Roll Warriors, which is the post Mutt album, is beyond me. Because the time to capitalize on that sound had come and gone.

This was so pathetic -- on "super-reviewers" -- people who obsessively furnish free work on someone else's for profit social networking site -- I have to repost some of it.

"This is especially true for Amazon," says Harp, who has written a whopping 4,692 reviews and has 785 official fans.

"There is a cadre of negative voters who act like a club and jump from reviewer to reviewer to condemn the villain du jour," says Harp. "I don't respond to people who seem to have a grudge with an author or composer."

As Harp and fellow super reviewer Daniel Jolley both testify, the smarter publishing houses send review copies to the most respected Amazon reviewers, giving the hobby extra cache.

But why so much effort? Is online conversation really that powerful? Or would these people make equally good friends in a bar?

"We now see the power of positive feedback for many people," said Clay Shirky, professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University. "We call them super reviewers, not obsessive reviewers, because they are largely held in a positive light by the public. Also, there is the 'red carpet' status of being in that elite group that many find attractive."

Sociologists have sometimes referred to the vast amounts of free work carried out on social networking sites as "digital sharecropping" because of the low rewards, but such thinking fails to explain the phenomenon, Shirky said.

"On that basis, Lego is exploiting children by making them build the toys before they can play with them. That's ridiculous of course -- the process of creating is the entertainment. It's the same with review sites," he
said.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/For-online-super-reviewers-apf-1731998810.html?x=0

Ok, I'm going to start making -this- pitch.

Record companies and publicists for classic rock bands and reissuers who can't get any of their stuff paid attention to except in Britain at Mojo and Classic Rock, this is for you! Contact me using ILM's e-mail link below and I'll tell you where to send a review copy so it can be chatted about right here by the experts and others who love the stuff. Plus, as an added bonus and for a limited time only I'll put you in contact with others whose eyeballs are here too and who review the stuff!

Don't hesitate! I repeat, this offer is for you and you alone!

i got an e-mail from some site where you can send your demos and CDs and for a small fee get EXPERT REVIEWS written about them. can't remember the name of it. they were looking for writers. so, you know, you pretty much have to rave about whatever you review cuz people are paying for their own custom reviews. very strange.

Ted Nugent on Alex Jones. There are two big radio shows for awesomely stupid crank conspiracy theory in the US. Coast to Coast with George Nori is one. Alex Jones is the other. Buy silver and gold.

Incidentally, Krugman and other economists have noted we're heading into an inflationary trap worldwide. Copper price, an indicator of manufacturing and building, is 20 percent down. However, gold is still going up, presumably still being bought by idiots in the US who have been told by the right that the US will hit massive inflation on Fox. And places like Alex Jones.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-alex-jones-show-july-9th-with-ted-nugent.html

Ted Nugent is my copper. I use him as the public face of American crazy extremism and you can judge its impact in the mainstream by how his currency as a 'pundit' rises and drops and where it does so.

ted is the only person ready for the coming apocalypse! him and the cockroaches. he will be our leader during the fourth reich new world order.

In terms of run-on sentences which include race-baiting and every manner of name-calling on people he doesn't care for, Ted tops himself every three or four days. From today (You can't make this stuff up although xhuxk tried and got close once):

In the otherwise universally recognized perfection of the American experiment in self-government, where evil monsters like Che Guevara and Mao Zedong are routinely worshipped by the very imbeciles that these historical murderers would have slaughtered unhesitatingly, to a community-organizer-in-chief whose terminal rookie agenda is maniacally to spend our way out of debt and drop charges against clear and present criminal New Black Panther thugs threatening voters in Philadelphia, to black-robed idiots claiming Americans have no right to self-defense, where pimps, whores and welfare brats party hearty with the mindless fantasy that Fedzilla will wipe their butts eternally, ad nauseam - I am compelled to increase my crowbar swinging to new heights every day.

If you don't laugh at this stuff you'll surely have to cry because he's what constitutes a 'best-selling author' in political books. Reading is so overrated.

Reminds me of the time I was talking to a friend on an NJ Transit train into NYC, discussing the state of the media, and I called the New York Post "a paper for people who think reading's for fags" and got the stink-eye from a woman across the aisle, who was reading guess what paper.

The Bi-Weekly Ted:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/07/12/american-kook-extremism-ted-nugent-in-spades/

You haveta read the review of him onstage in Pasadena, Texas. Laff riot!

Past-Expiry Indie Nerd (occasionally with hard rocking tendencies) Alert! Something I wrote about new and recent archival reissues by the Endtables, Tin Huey, Pistol Whip, the Easter Monkeys, Method Actors, Tutu and the Pirates, Da-Exclamation Point, Pylon, and Raymilland:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-07-13/music/the-endtables-emerge-at-last/

You actually make me wanna hear that Pistol Whip thing. And I know I had an Easter Monkeys thing (cassette, I think it was) at some point in the very distant past. I must have got it for the guitars.

And on Ted's old defamation/breach of contract case in Michigan:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/07/14/best-preview-of-the-nuges-third-tier-tour/

Unfortunate the guy's so extreme. The lyrics to Great White Buffalo are actually pretty cool, about how Indians just took what they needed from nature and the white man screwed shit up by getting greedy and then got caught in the wrath of the Great One. Does he still do that tune? it seems out of line with his current beliefs

Actually, his pretty decent 2007 album Love Grenade had what basically seemed to me like a four-song Indianophile (Native Ameriphile? whatever) suite in the middle: "Geronimo & Me," "Eagle Brother," "Spirit Of The Buffalo," "Aborigine."

interesting. weird guy. not really familiar with his new stuff, though Love Grenade is a pretty great title.

Bob Probert, a strapping forward for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks who became one of hockey’s most accomplished brawlers but struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, died Monday in Windsor, Ontario

I remember him from an old NHL computer game way back! Around the same time as Wayne Gretsky. The only ice hockey dudes names i can remember along with Federov.

also LOL @ this cover
http://strider01.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/gayles1.jpg
What does this sound like?

Does he still do that tune (Great White Buffalo)? it seems out of line with his current beliefs

Yes. It's on every live album he did after initially recording it for Tooth, Fang & Claw which was notably -before- his breakout album on Epic, Ted Nugent. It is on every live album and DVD he's issued in the last five years. Plus, he does a big skit with it onstage.

Love Grenade is decent but I lose interest as soon as "Girl Scout Cookies" comes along, an unintentionally creepy tune in which Ted characteristically shows his yawning lack of ability to see how he's perceived by others. As a creepy old man. Unless he's involved in doing stuff for the military, which seems to come out of an uncharacteristic
shame over being a pro-war draft dodger, Ted seems to have no perceptible human empathy.

I put on Craveman the other night, his first studio album after 9/11 and it's probably the strongest of the two studio albums he's done since then. The ferocity of it is still pretty mighty. Outside of "Raw Dogs and War Hogs," which is his pro-war-and-get-revenge song, it's mostly apolitical (outside of one anti-gay rant on "I Won't Change
My Sex"). He wasn't yet a best-selling author for Regnery.

At this point I think Ted's Indian-o-philia is because he actually really thinks he's a North American Indian.

that fireballet album is more pop-prog than their first album. since most of the first album was a classical suite. plus, the second album even has some disco moves on it. which is why most prog-heads don't rate it highly. and probably why i like it a lot more than their first album.

was listening to kayak yesterday. they never really hit it big. they also had a very entertaining take on prog. poppy.