Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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.

Biggest big rock song this summer, by far, is Lady Antebellum's "Stars Tonight." Since it's not country at all -- built on a huge crunching riff and party hearty hook/chorus -- and it's not like anything else on the Lady A album, it seems not to have a place. Couldn't get into the rest of the Lady A album which is
soppy, nice and unmemorable. However, "Stars Tonight" fits into the same category of blue collar tight denim arena cheer as BTO "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" or Grand Funk's "We're an American Band" or "Footstompin' Music," the latter of which I noticed Sugarland's backing band breaking into whenever Nettles and Bush went into the crowd in balloons last year.

So it needs some mention, sunburst Les Paul brandishing and all.

"Girl Scout Cookies" makes me laugh.

I can understand that. The first I played it I laughed. The second time it made the back of my neck sweat a
little. But I'm older than you, too, Phil.

What really made me laugh was interviewing Ted and having him stonewall me, insisting that it wasn't a metaphor - that the song was really about cookies.

The CD booklet had a photo of him, obviously a very old one when he was much younger, posing with Girl Scouts. I suspect it was inserted as an obfuscation, perhaps at the suggestion of the label.

Just got around to Jackyl's When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide which xhuxk was halfsies on upstream.

Have to agree -- JJ Dupree and company have no obvious facility with tunes on it despite the fingernails-on-chalkboard accapella version of "Mercedes Benz." I think the purpose was to be grinningly irritating with it. If so, mission accomplished!

"Just Like a Negro" has a decent riff. Alb is mostly hysterical in attack because you don't notice so much there are no effective peaks in the numbers -- they just go go go with guitars, gang shouts and rant, the latter of which often makes no difference. "Freight Train's" best part is the Joe Perry nick from "Train Kept a Roillin'" at the end which makes you just wish they'd played the whole song.

"When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide" is a good tune, the best on the set, because it's actually a song. You hear the Cinderella/Bon Jovi wandering troubadour hair metal thing in it. Let's put on some AC/DC and get blind drunk while the lyrical guitars play's the basic theme. Rest of the album could have used the same attention.

There's not much to recommend here, unfortunately. "Having loads and loads of fun, loads and loads of fun," it goes on the kickoff tune. For a few bits here and there, not enough.

Yeah, my copy of that Jackyl album is already long gone, sad to say.

So George, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm figuring that "Tomorrow" (also the longest cut -- and not really very long for a prog band, at 4:44 -- five cuts under two minutes, wtf??) is the most plugged-in and electrified song on Strawbs' Grave New World. Even maybe hints at metal at some points, but then again it hints at "MacArthur Park" at other points, so I dunno. Pretty sure I like this '72 LP more than '74's Hero And Heroine regardless, but it's a close call. And as usual, I'm still clueless as to its overriding concept/plot, if there is one (think you said above there was). And still hearing as much Genesis as Tull, though I'm still not sure if that's just because of the singing. Actually not hearing much Fairport Convention at all, despite what I figured above -- or at least, not nearly as much as on Steeleye Span's ('77) Storm Force Ten, which I spun right after.

So Scott, figured you might know this: how close to hard rock did Larry Norman ever get? Did he have an actual band that followed him from album to album, and on tour, or what? Never heard him before, at all, but a couple LPs were in that discard box from Metal Mike, and I have to say that maybe half of Only Visiting This Planet ('79) kicks more (in a hard-nosed singer-songwriter kind of way) than I ever would have guessed. Pretty sure, as Christers go, T-Bone Burnett and Bruce Cockburn never had so much oomph to them. Favorites are probaby "The Outlaw," "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus," and "I Am The Six O'Clock News." Ends with '50s rock'n'roll revival ("Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music") then a good rambling talking-blues Dylan imitation ("Reader's Digest"), cool. But maybe this album is an anomaly? Still need to listen to the other one I got. Has a great title, though, too, especially with him standing amid those Stonehenge stones on the back.

Also (Scott), you noticed I finally wrote about the Endtables, right?

Oh wait, apparently Norman originally put out Only Visiting This Planet in 1972 on Solid Rock, and the pressing I have (dated '78 not '79 actually) was a reissue, on Street Level. (The other one I got is called Upon This Rock, which came out in 1969 -- "the first commercially released Jesus rock album", according to Wiki, which also calls Planet "one of the most influential Christian rock records of all time." Really?? So now I'm wondering who else it influenced.)

Oh yeah, another thing about that '72 Strawbs LP is that they do a public-domain-sounding (though apparently not technically p.d.) little Brit music hall nostalgia number near the end ("Ah Me, Ah My," I think) about how the good old days are all behind us; not sure if many prog-folk bands did that or not (makes me think Bonzo Dog Doo Dah more than Fairport, though I guess the Kinks and Beatles sort of did that kind of move first.) Also, occasionally their chords sound Far Eastern to me.

i read the endtables thing, yeah, it's a great piece! it totally reminds of something you would have written years ago and i would have said OH MY GOD I GOTTA HEAR THIS STUFF! and i do want to hear that other stuff. and you got me to read the village voice! that hasn't happened in a long time.

larry norman waa hugely influential in christian music circles. not just rock, but folk, pop, etc. he was a big deal for years. about as rocking as he ever got was with his first band People who had a hit on Capitol in 68 (? around there). then he went solo and the rest is history. as far as rockers gone christian i'd probably take the first couple of phil keaggy records. also got a few of the really early christian records by john michael talbot and they are really good! really mellow though. not all that rocking. but good in a breezy 70's way. he started the band mason-proffit with his brother and they had some success before he found the lord.

Grave New World is the only strawbs album I like. I need to dig out my LP sometime to play it.

Grave New World was one of the Hudson-Ford albums but not their most "rocking." It has more of quiet cold in the woods thing going, if I recall (I may have to drag it out). I surprisingly liked it a lot and remember Christgau giving it a bad review which cued me to it using the 180 rule. "Benedictus" was supposedly the star cut from it.

Definitely not as hard as Steeleye's Storm Force Ten, or Rocket Cottage or "Allison Gross" -- which you have to hear if you haven't yet -- from Parcel of Rogues.

You want to hear Bursting at the Seams, the Strawbs album right after. See here:

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

Hudson-Ford put more rock into the band, particularly on "Part of the Union" and "Lay Down" which are rather uncharacteristic of most of their material. But good.

Benedictus is the track that sold me on it. Its fabulous. I sold the LP with the lefty bashing "Part Of The Union" on it. It wasn't very good and I hate that particular track. I guess i remember growing up in the 80s with the strawbs playing tory party conventions.

xp

That was the album.

And I'd say if you're hearing Bonzos and music hall in this period of the Strawbs, it was probably kind of Hudson Ford's doing. Because they were always into that kind of wry or alternately jolly sound.

Although Strawbs didn't get the jollies much, particularly later.

Cant beat a bit of Bonzos really.

No argument from me. Love it.

Benedictus is the track that sold me on it. Its fabulous

I would have figured. You liked Camel, right?

In any case, so did I.

Best Status Quo Video Ever/Best Misuse of Status Quo "Slow Train" Tune Ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6TeM4VSgNI

First three minutes, anyway.

Who are the chavs in that anyway?

Chavs??

Another killer LP from the Metal Mike box, can't imagine why he wound up pruning out this one: Johnny Diesel And The Injectors, self-titled, Chrysalis 1989. American pressing, but according to the paragraph on the back, the band was formed in Perth, Australia and moved to Sydney (where they wound up touring with Jimmy Barnes, the guy from Cold Chisel -- real big deal Down Under, right?), even though Johnny himself was born in Massachusetts and had moved to Oz at age 9, and eventually wound up pumping gas. On the album he looks like early Johnny Cougar as a gas station attendant, and inside the album he and the Injectors sound like the Stonesiest side of early '80s Coug, or early '80s Bryan Adams at his very, very punchiest. Except by 1989, of course, neither Coug nor Adams was making music like this at all anymore, and Diesel goes further by crossing it, maybe a third of the time, with the Steve Marriott/Humble Pie side of Rose Tattoo. Total blue collar heartland meat-hooked bar-band bogan boogie that squeals like a pig when it needs to. Okay, doesn't ever get as unhinged as Rose Tattoo or Bon-era AC/DC -- too AOR corporate -- but kinda doesn't have to. Meatiest, hookiest, swingingest cuts are probably "Parisienne Hotel," "Burn," and "Get Ya Love", but I also love the absolute Coug/Adams Xerox "Don't Need Love," where it sounds like he's saying "Don't need love from Russian Jews," though probably not. Token original ballad, "Cry In Shame," sounds like good, early Black Crowes; token cover, "Since I Fell For You" (written by Buddy Johnson in 1945, done since by everybody from the Sonics to Ronnie Milsap) sounds like late '70s J. Geils in soul mode; closer is a six-minute instrumental hard blues vamp called "Thang II." Produced by Terry Manning, who has a pretty impressive resume'. According to Wiki, the album was the band's debut, and went to #2 in Australia, and they had a bunch more chart down there after, including a couple #1s in the early '90s. Never charted in the U.S. at all, and quite possibly never released another album here. Don't get the idea that this Chrysalis one got much, if any, distribution. Never even heard of the guy before.

(Uh...come to think of it, did Rose Tattoo even really have a Humble Pie side? I more think of their having a Faces side, and early AC/DC, if anybody, having eaten more Humble Pie. All I'm saying though is that the Johnny Diesel cuts that remind me of Humble Pie also remind me a little of Rose Tattoo. As Aussies, doubt can't be too far-fetched.)

Benedictus is the track that sold me on it. Its fabulous

I would have figured. You liked Camel, right?

Yes I do.

did Rose Tattoo even really have a Humble Pie side?

No. No stop and start, no Peter Frampton modality. Which took them out of blues boogie and into jazzy funky hard rock up 'til Rockin the Fillmore.

I more think of their having a Faces side

Yeah. One guitarist who was the muscle man's Ron Wood.

Been listening to no-date early 70's self-do by a band called Bike. This is real skot stuff.

98 -- 120 lb pound raging nor'easter pantywaists mixing white knuckle Friday night Black Velvet/Seagrams 7 booze seshes, hash and meth pills in that order. And boy are they good at it. Hand claps, cowbell and harmonica and songs about having the most fun ever speeding down an old dirt road and one song with only the lyrics "salt ... from sea" to a Yardbirds riff and berserk mouth harp. And how could a band named Bike not do a climactic song called "Ride"? Totally shunned by girls so they did more booze, pills and hash, sharpening their craft.

Which they do. Another example of from the bottomless pit of early hard rock US homeboys.

Chavs??

UK -- trashy women or men. Kid Rock fodder in the US. Female versh = Elastic, compulsively exhibitionist, polymer fiber, shiny, skin tight, high high heels. Objects of ridicule for purposes of titillation in Fleet Street press. I think. The real Brits will correct me.

Inspirationally muscular plus bad teeth. I always liked "Slow Train." Now I really like it. Good for a bit of a polish, so to speak.

I saw an odd free show last night at the Port Washington Public Library, made stranger by all the recent Strawbs talk. Ian Lloyd was the featured attraction. Lloyd, apparently a local, cranked through a short set of Stories stuff, then introduced John Ford from Strawbs (also now a Port Washington resident). God bless him if that's his real hair. Together they did "If I Needed Someone" and "Part of the Union." They're planning an album together. Lloyd's second set started with that Cars song from Goose Bumps, then some recent solo stuff (pretty heavy, one song involving an alien mask) & of course Bro Lou joined again by Ford. Through the crappy library sound system it was hard to tell if Lloyd still has his voice. He definitely has the range. In a good studio I bet he could still bring it.

Yeah, I've heard "chavs" as referring to white-trash British blokes before; just never to the birds. Learn something new every day.

As Aussies, doubt can't be too far-fetched.

should've been "that can't be too far-fetched."

I wrote about a good 1980 Ian Lloyd LP -- which I called a "secret Bryan Adams album" with Lloyd singing -- last year, right about here:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

Today: WRNO-FM 100's The Rock Album Vol II from 1982, sponsored/ bankrolled by Miller High Life Rock To Riches. WRNO evidently being an AOR from New Orleans, where all these no-name bands come from. (Now Talk Radio since 2006, Wiki says, after switching from AOR to Classic Rock in 1997. Time rolls on.) Anyway, I'm loving this. Most metal-heavy cuts would be Persia's "Don't Let Your Dreams" (NWOBHM-like power-drama metal), Chrome's (not that Chrome) Nugenty-riffed "It Was You," and The Rebels' late '60s-style biker psych "Hit The Road." Big-assed butt-rock: Melange's "Lonely Tonight" (about which Metal Mike helpfully penned "Bad Co" in ink on the back cover); Quick Zipper's hefty white funker "Batters Box" (not as loaded with baseball metaphors as I'd hoped but still maybe the most macho sexist dunderheadness on an album hilariously loaded with such stuff), and the unebelivable accidental parody WRNO Theme (not credited to a specific band, though a good one's definitely playing on it) entitled "Rock To The Rock," which (as you'd kind of get the idea from its title) is a B.T.O./"Hot Blooded"-weight yellalong with the chorus, duh, "We're gonna ROCK! to the ROCK!," yep.

Models' "Child Star" and Strait Face's "Good Guys" are more Babys-type AOR powerpop, really catchy; The Limit's "Modern Girl" a slightly wimpier and very slightly new wave (you can tell from the title since it says "modern" in it) version of the same. That's almost all the songs, so, pretty decent slugging percentage overall. Liner notes say 20,000 local bands entered the competition (not sure if that's just New Orleans -- guessing it was maybe a national thing?), and the winner would get $25,000 and a deal with Atlantic, so you could watch "one of your local acts explode and become another Fleetwood Mac or Journey."

I wonder who won. Really makes me wonder about the whole concept of independently/locally released mainstream (as opposed to new wave) hard rock in the early '80s, a phenomenon nobody much talks about. There were lots of bands like that in Detroit, most of which I ignored and probably assumed sucked, because I was such a skinny-tie snob at the time. Rough Cutt, Adrenaline...No idea if they were any good. Wish I still had the LP by a local Detroit band called The Lordz.

And also, really makes me think about these low-rent early '80s AOR station compilations of unsigned local bands -- were they all this good? I'm guessing this one (Vol. II in New Orleans alone) was part of a bigger series; did Miller High Life sponsor these sorts of albums in every major city? Is there anybody who collects these things, or has documented them? Has anybody ever tried to compile a mainstream hard rock equivalent of Back From the Grave or Killed By Death, from the best tracks? If not, somebody should. Wrote about this other one, on the same record label (Starstream, based in Houston -- guessing they specialized in such recs?), called KZOK Best Of The Northwest 1981 here a couple years ago. (Just pulled it out; no Miller mention, but sez $25 grand goes to national winner -- Station PDs pick five finalists, who'd "compete in a live show before a panel of judges from the music industry.") Liked that Northewest comp, too:

Rolling 2006 Metal Thread

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

"And also, really makes me think about these low-rent early '80s AOR station compilations of unsigned local bands"

i can make you a REALLY good tape or two of good cuts if you want me too.

i've always wanted to put a mix up on ilm of radio station comp tracks, but i never get around to it. plus i am helpless when it comes to digitizing stuff. maria used to help me, but something happened to her computer that makes it hard for her to upload stuff. don't know what.

Chavs (in scotland it's Neds) are a bit different to the US white trash but I guess it's the most comparable.

The word NED has been in usage a lot longer than CHAV though. I saw a mid 90s episode of Taggart the other week there from 1985 and he referred to wee neds in that. Chavs is a 00s english phenomenon. If you have seen Little Britain, Vicky Pollard is a chav.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_%28Scottish%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

The radio station comp talk reminded me of this track from my childhood, "Burning Out Young" by Hey Boy. An all female Houston band that got pushed hard by KLOL but never made it. I saw them play some campus festival, and I'm pretty sure Dana Steele (of ESPN now) hosted, but I could be combining things.

Hunted down some info on the guitar player, she's now in Cheap Chick, playing Chick Neilson.

http://www.whitewolfzone.co.uk/beacham1.htm

And there were several other bands before you left Houston, correct?

Oh, yeah. I did a couple of, like, cover bands that also played original music. I did a band called Hey Boy, and I met a guy who owned a recording studio and was actually a pretty big name in town. And he heard some of my original stuff, and heard her singing, and he thought, "you guys could really do something." So she and I put this band Hey Boy together. And we actually won a contest with a radio station and got on a compilation album and that's how things really started to take off.
And I wasn't really happy about how things were going, so we folded that band and started XOX, and that was the band that really did a lot. We were one of the biggest bands in the region. And we were on the radio; we weren't even signed, but there were some DJs there that really liked us and they'd play us. And we got to this national contest in Austin that Willie Nelson was hosting, (laughs) and we didn't win that but from that we got the interest of the same management company that manages ZZ Top. And they also manage Clint Black and Point Blank and a couple of other bands. And they assigned Simon Renshaw to us. He manages the Dixie Chicks now and Mary J. Blige and a lot of other big acts. And what Simon did was to try to groom us for the record labels.

it was a cool song, Heart with some new wave and some muscle. "You're Burnin' out young, You're burnin' out young. Hey Boy! You're burnin' out young." I should buy that comp the next time I run across it. Probably never will now that I'm looking for it.

Chavs. I realize I may be committing sacrilege by naming Billie Piper but that's what she looks like when she's on the teebee in 'Merica.

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Billie+Piper&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=coleen+rooney&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=cheryl+cole&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=Katie+Price&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Ran through Dirty Looks' Turn Of The Screw again; I'd call it a marginal keeper, I guess. Favorite track is definitely "C'Mon Frenchie," for being the fastest, catchiest, and funniest track on the record, even though I still haven't quite deduced what it's about -- reminds me a lot of Kix, partly for the between-verse asides and apparent wisecracks, one of which concerns a dirty old man. Agree with George that "Nobody Rides For Free" has some laudable swing to it, thanks to an almost ZZ-like Southern riff. "L.A. Anna" might have the most convincingly chunky AC/DC-like repeatariff pattern to it. Rest of the album, even relatively speedy cuts like "Love Screams" and "Have Some Balls," reminds me more of Dirty Looks's other Atlantic labelmates Ratt than Kix, partly because of all the echo on the vocals I suppose. And sounding like Ratt is fine, but it's not like many of the songs have hooks that really stand out from the pack. "Go Away" is the lone hair ballad, and "Hot Flash Jelly Roll" is the vaguely bluesish strip-club grinder -- okay, but not nearly as fun as Frank Zappa's bubblesoul parody "Gumdrop Jelly Roll" on his '68 Ruben And The Jets East L.A. doo-wop parody album (which I'd never heard before this week, but I've been listening to as part of a new reissue-including-outtakes CD called Greasy Love Songs, and I like it way more than I would've guessed.)

Uh...So I just realized that the phrase "C'mon Frenchie" comes from Zappa's "Dirty Love," weird! Swear I didn't do that on purpose. (Also, the Ruben & the Jets bubblegum song is actually "Jelly Roll Gumdrop," not the other way around. "The way you do the bop Like a spinning top The Pachuco Hop And the L.A. Slop You make a street car stop At the soda shop And my eye-balls pop..." And the music is spot-on, perfect.)

So, Pat Travers' Makin' Magic turns out to be closer to how I've always thought of him than Crash and Burn -- just way purer heavy blues-rock. I also don't like it as much, doesn't have as much in the way of hooks and odd left turns, but I can see how guitar players, say, might like it more. Still really good; faves probably "Statesboro Blues" for heaviness and instro "What You Mean To Me" for the soloing.

Decided the cut on the Skatt Bros' Strange Spirits that most anticipates early '80s flashdance-metal AOR per se' (Aldo Nova, John Parr, Survivor, whoever) is the title track, though "Fear Of Flying" comes close in that it basically sounds exactly like disco Kiss. (Also on Casablanca, obv; supposedly that's a Kiss pinball machine they're playing on the back cover.) Most forgettable song, which I always forget is there, is "Someone's Taken My Baby," a passable soft-rock ballad. Nothing really sounds country, exactly, though the other (great) ballad "Midnight Companion" (best song in history ever to mention a Rand McNally map) and "Life At The Outpost" make me think country -- the latter because it's about cowboys and because it has those spaghetti western guitar parts. Great song I didn't mention above is "Old Enough," the almost six minute closer, about a 12-year-old runaway who winds up living sleazy in the city; evolves into this awesome ending chant: "Sally, Sally, Sally's the alley, dancing...."

in the alley. (You get the idea Sally might be a child prostitute, or stripper, but it's never spelled it out -- same thing lots of hair-metal bands sang about, a few years later. Also of course possible, given the Skatts' cruiser-music premise, that she might be a he, and might be doing something in the alley other than dancing. But the song's totally on her side, and celebrating her street smarts.)

listening to Off Broadway's 1979 debut ON and 1980 follow-up QUICK TURNS. chicago (by way of wisconsin? second album has a madison p.o. box address to contact the band) power pop but with none of cheap trick's power or pezband's quirkiness. still, i'm charmed. i'm easily charmed. gorge should stay away, but chuck might want to investigate for a dollar or two. this is purist power pop. meaning, slightly anemic. maybe i have anemia?

http://www.offbroadwayusa.com/OffBroadwayOn.jpg

http://cliffjohnson.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/coverbmp1.jpg