Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

Tried really hard to connect with Jackson Highway's 1980 self-titled LP on Capitol (also $1), thanks to the timely title "Rock And Roll Man (Hung Up On A Disco Girl)," but after a few listens I'm convinced Jasper and Oliver were right in dismissing them as "very commerical Southern boogie, not hard enough to stand alongside other outfits in the genre." Except they can't stand alongside the the best commercial stuff in the genre (like say .38 Special) either, plus they're as much would-be late '70s Seger (sans songs or hooks) as would-be Southern rock, to my ears. The closing track with a bunch of Blackfoot guys guesting on it is long (4:43) but not especially brutal; deadliest thing on the LP is probably the guitar-squall intro of "Hook, Line And Sinker." "Nobody To Love" (in which the singer can't find nobody to love) plays fast and loose with double negatives. Buddy Holly "Rave On" cover is just passable. Rock guy dealing with disco song, best thing on the album, could afford a funkier beat.

Truth be told, a track or two on that Bus Boys LP I blurbed about a few posts up come closer to heavy Southern boogie rock (in the Mother's Finest sense in Bus Boys' case) than anything by Jackson Highway.

This is my jam right now. 1971 hit Australian single I'd never heard before a friend of mine put it on a mixed CD for me. Sounds like the Bob Seger System mellowing out to some Canned Heat or something. Or Brownsville Station on a beach Whatever it is, I played it six times in a row while cleaning out my basement last weekend.

(sorry I didn't read enough of this thread to know if this fits. just the australian bands mentioned above + "past expiry" made me think of this)

Yep, I bought a (early '80s reissue) 12-inch of that for $1 last month, too. Didn't get it at first, but I came around. This is from another thread:

amazed to learn "Eagle Rock," which is really no great shakes, was a gigantic hit in 1971 in Australia, where it somehow topped the charts for ten weeks. Maybe I'll force-feed it to myself a couple more times, but I doubt it'll hit. (Copyright on my 12-inch single says '82, so I guess it's possible this is a re-recording.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 April 2009 01:14

Turns out Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" does have some kind of archival riff and primal structure to it, best overheard loud from the next room over after a couple beers (which is how it was probably often heard in Australia at the time, I bet.) So not as great a pub-boogie single as say "Teenage Head" or "Smokin' In the Boys Room," but still not bad. (And the lyrics to their B-side "Daddy Rocks Off" basically go something like "boogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie boogie.")

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 April 2009 16:06

Has great rhythm thump and guitar turnarounds without being heavy. Song used in the opening sequence of "Wolf Creek", Australia's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," mostly for its bonhommie in the car with three students, one guys/two girls, on their way for a tour after a night of excessive drinking and barfing with friends.

― Gorge, Thursday, 16 April 2009 02:59

(Actually bought it for 50 cents. Not that anybody cares.)

THERE IS A NEW UFO ALBUM COMING OUT.

not that i really care...

In constructing this new album, legendary rock icons UFO composed more than 35 new tracks in advance of hitting the studio, 13 of which were short-listed and produced at the studio, and 10 of them making the final cut. The final product; the band's new album, The Visitor.

The current UFO lineup continues to consist of the three original members, Phil Mogg (vocals), Paul Raymond (guitar, keyboards), and Andy Parker (drums), as well as American world-class guitarist Vinnie Moore. Bass legend and original member Pete Way is currently suffering from a liver disease and was unfortunately not available for the studio production.

"All those who have been into UFO for a long time will find all our characteristic trademarks on The Visitor, and anybody new to the band will be impressed by our enthusiasm and dynamism," frontman Phil Mogg enthuses on the subject of the new songs. The Visitor sees the band benefiting especially from their collaboration with Vinnie Moore, who joined UFO in autumn 2003 and has made an excellent impression on the albums You Are Here (2004) and The Monkey Puzzle (2006), and on the band’s tours. Mogg continues,"Without running down previous UFO lineups, it's been a long time since we had a team as strong as this one. Vinnie contributes his youthful energy and amazing guitar technique, and in Andy's return we've seen the reappearance of a musician who has always been very important to the band's original sound."

Cracks me up that you guys were already talking about Eagle Rock this month. Guess I should have done a search. It was a grower with me too - took me a few times now I can't get enough.

chuck, have you ever heard/owned the Buster album I bought last weekend. mid-70's glam rock/pop. do a killer cover of Born To Be Wild. You would love it.

Bands who had their heydey in the '70s (and UFO was fucking awesome) always go overboard in trying to say that their newest album is a return to form.

RIP Pete Way

the album by New Adventures i bought was kinda cool too. 1980. thought it was gonna be more punk pop, but it's definitely got more of a rockin' soloin' vibe. they were dutch, i think. they just got new wave haircuts is all. the titles tell it all: drive me wild, spacelab cowboy, if your mamma don't like it, rock & roll woman, back to the pit.

Bands who had their heydey in the '70s (and UFO was fucking awesome) always go overboard in trying to say that their newest album is a return to form.

The most recent Uriah Heep album was pretty solid.

I need to listen to that new Uriah record. (Was actually thinking of tracking through it on Rhapsody yesterday, but I am always slow when it comes to on-line listening.)

Have never heard Buster, Scott. Will keep my eyes peeled, though!

i'm listening again, and the Buster album is a dream. Such amazing production. And such an uncanny mix of awesome 60s-era sunshine pop and 70's glam. It doesn't hurt that my copy is a super-clean british rca pressing. don't know if it came out in the states, but if it did it was probably on crappy dynaflex vinyl. the guitars and the drum break on born to be wild are friggin' awe-inspiring.

Pete Way apparently not dead yet. But unable to get back into the US because of the war
on terror.

I'm guessing what happened is: Like many British rockers, Pete has a few drunk driving, drunk & fighting, drunken disorderly, or drunk with drugs in the US. Petty stuff when no one cared and the label, Chrysalis, had a lawyer to come down pay your bail, work out any outstanding warrants and convince a judge you weren't a threat to society. Same with Phil Mogg who had trouble getting into the US a few years ago on the same thing.

So Pete leaves the US to record and play back in England with Waysted. And now not only is he sick, but he can't get through Homeland Security because DHS now routinely denies entry to anyone who has or once had the taint of undesirable or a history of arrests. I'm wagering this is now commonplace and if you're not wealthy and famous and with big lawyer, like f'r instance,
Ozzy or what's left of the Stones, this is now a huge hassle for old rock musicians. And it would probably be worth a news story.

GWOT collateral damage: Old Brit drunks denied entry into US as potential terrorists.

Actually, I'm surprised Pete Townshend can still get into the US. I bet his lawyer is always busy.

It's too bad about Pete Way, both the illness and the visa troubles. I have a couple buddies in the music business who know him somewhat well, and they say he is an absolutely great guy.

Well my attempts to get a response about this guy hasn't provoked anything on the Dadrock thread.

http://www.winterband.com/

I'm hoping this inspires some Fussell-styled analysis from Dick Destiny. Used to live nearby this guy. Wild.

Best song titles:

9. Trinity Schminity
13. Jesus Ain't No Hippie

He really doesn't go for the father/son/holy ghost thing.

Also, uppity women:

We were honored to be able to give a CD to Senator Zell Miller and he was kind enough to let us take a picture with him and drummer Philip (and to give permission for us to put it here).

For the couple of fans of Dave Gilbert, the Rockets and New Order, Dennis Thompson has a new blog and explains how DG messed up a showcase in front of Mercury Records. Neal Merryweather even makes an experience at the Starwood.

Here. For those who don't know, Gilbert left New Order and was taken up by the Rockets. The Rockets' second album featured a semi-FM smash, "Oh Well." A little success went to the head. Subsequent albums, while good, did not get as much traction. Gilbert became more erratic, eventually derailing the band. Mostly known for being big in bars around Detroit. Truly a great classic rock 'n roll voice. Dead now.

As for Winterband, hmmm, there's a lot of heavy crazy in the US now. F'r instance, fits right in with the special manias of the Lehigh Valley Biblical Neo-Nazi, the scripture-spouting anti-union ex-union steward.

These are the class of people, now almost all the GOP or loosely associated with it, who voted for decades to instate as leaders the people who've wrecked the economy and made the American brand name into a joke. For reasons difficult to explain other than just plain stupidity and susceptibility to manipulation, instead of now hating on those who've done the dirty
work, they hate on the allegedly Godless, or homos, people they think want to take their guns, union workers, 'socialists,' 'commernists' or other people in their same economic slice.

If you lived in Italy prior to WWII maybe you'd have something pungent to say about this, seeing how Benito Mussolini seems to be the kind of savior they're looking for. In fact, the end of Mussolini's power could be a metaphor for the GOP now. The rest of Italy sensibly refused to fight the Allies after the Sicily landings, forcing the Wehrmacht to take over and employ Otto Skorzeny to rescue the Duce. Except the GOP has no modern Otto Skorzeny, no Wehrmacht to reconstitute the old law and order.

Talked about this a little in Rolling Country, too: The cosmic illogic of John Rich pushing his Detroit song on Sean Hannity's America.

Completely different than when Pete Seeger went around singing "This Land is Your Land."

Okay, I'm now COMPLETELY obsessed with "Eagle Rock" -- insidious earworm! Googling turns up an alternate early video, a boozy reunion version, and animated Wiggles. But here's how to play it on the balafon:

xp For what it's worth, I edited or oversaw pieces at both the Voice and Billboard (connected to a Cat Stevens a/k/a Yusuf Islam cover story in the latter case) about foreign musicians having Visa problems post-9/11, but George is right -- a piece specifically about aging, now fifth-tier rock guys whose terrorism-unrelated civil misdeeds are being used aginst them, and who can't afford to fight it, surely seems like it could be interesting.

Speaking of UFO, I got an advance of the new album in the mail yesterday, and made it about halfway through it. A couple songs seemed okay (third one was even fast I think), but I can't say they were exactly holding my attention. Nice guitar parts here and there, though. I'll get back to it eventually.

Did listen a couple times today though to this $1 album Spitballs, which came out on Beserkley in '78 and has all the wimps and weirdos on the roster (Modern Lovers, Greg Kihn Band, Earthquake, Rubinoos, and UK pub rock guy Sean Tyla, supposedly, though no names are credited on my domestic copy) covering their favorite '50s and '60s oldies. Guess the label was the cloesest thing to a Stiff in the U.S.; the camaraderie feels comparable to me (and I read once that Earthquake had recorded a cover of Ian Dury's "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll"; not sure if it ever saw the light of day). Favorite spitballs are mostly versions of songs I never heard before or at least never thought that much about -- "Gino Is A Coward" (?), "Over & Over" (Bobby Day?),
"Let Her Dance" (Bobby Fuller Four sort of imitating Buddy Holly I think), "I Want Her So Bad" (no idea, but it's easily the most punk rock thing on the album.) Most mainstream-'70s-hard-boogie cuts are probably "Knock On Wood" and "Feel Too Good," the latter credited to Roy Wood so I assume it's a Move number. And the rendition of the Who's "Boris The Spider" make it seem like an Alice Cooper precursor. Side closers are "Telstar" and "Batman," pretty neat.

Isn't Earth Quake's "Mr. Security" and the Vanda & Young cover of "Friday On My Mind" on that? Or do they do "Head Held High?" Earth Quake did lotsa covers, "Rte. 66," "Kicks", "Ma Ma Ma Belle". "Knock On Wood" ain't bad but, as I recall, it's really only about half a song, the band sounding like it knocked it out between takes just screwing around and decided to keep it after redoing the vocals to pro spec.

The things that need reissuing are Earth Quake's live album, which was their first for
Beserkely, and it's almost all covers. And a double live Beserkely done for a German TV rock show with Earth Quake, Tyla Gang, Greg Kihn and someone else. The first two, which made up one vinyl LP of a 2-fer, smoked. Tyla Gang actually was a Stiff artist at one point. They made one or two for Stiff, as spin-off of Ducks Deluxe, doing a stoked R&B pub boogie and pop style. Which wound up on one LP called "Yachtless," too, which was on Beserkely but which might not have seen domestic release. That was a definitive. Great single, probably from Stiff days, called "Styrofoam." "Moonproof," which followed -- was domestic and on B, and I recall not liking it at all.

foreign musicians having Visa problems post-9/11

This belongs in the metal thread, but the Swedish black metal band Marduk are playing NYC on 5/21; it's their first U.S. tour since February 2001.

Isn't Earth Quake's "Mr. Security" and the Vanda & Young cover of "Friday On My Mind" on that? Or do they do "Head Held High?"

Nah, none of those are on Spitballs. (And it's hard to figure out which bands/artists are doing which songs anyway, since as I said, they're not credited. I don't get the idea that any of the tracks are, say, just Earthquake, per se'; it's not a compilation so much as a tossed-off collaboration, or at least that's what it looks like to me. My copy doesn't even list the names of the performers on the cover, though Scott Seward says he has an UK import copy that does. But yeah, "knocked it out between takes just screwing around" is pretty much the aesthetic of the entire album, not just "Knock On Wood." Though that aesthetic definitely goes along with the whole we-might-as-well-be-having-a-pickup-softball-game feel of a lot of these bands' music, including Earthquake's, in the first place.

The Earthquake LPs I have on my shelf, fwiw, are Rocking The World from '75,8.5 (as in Richter Scale) from '76, and Leveled from '77 (easily the one I play the most, thanks to their covers of "Kicks" and Hot Chocolate's "Emma").

Been listening this weekend, or trying to, to the self-titled '75 Columbia LP ($1 used promo pressing) from Zuider Zee, who'd probably wind up the second-to-last musical artist on my alphabetically ordered LP shelf if I decided to keep the thing, but I don't think I'm going to. Just too twee and weedy in its late-Beatles (& maybe Wings) appropriations; could defintely use way more proto-Cheap-Trick powerchords, in other words, though I have a feeling Geir Hongo would go for it. George might even like it more than me, too; I'm just not Beatles-obsessive enough. Basically, the singer usually does a McCartney thing, and they also put his voice through filters or whatever to give him gruffer Lennon-like parts (unless those are two different guys, which I tend to doubt). Do like intermittent sections of the two longest/archest/proggiest songs, five-minute humorously titled "Zeebra" (featuring boogie-woogie piano and Motown bassline and hard rock guitar interludes) and almost-eight-minute "All That Is" (an all-over-the-place mess including a minute or so where it gets loud and fast and stays weird and thus anticipates Tin Huey to my new wave ears). And being Beatles fans, they don't lose the melodies when they get complicated, a good thing. But the only time they stay vigorous enough to hold my attention for an entire song is "Haunter Of The Darkness," at the tail-end of Side One. (They also do something called "The Last Song Of Its Kind," a very deceitful title seeing how it's just a bad flimsy ballad, and I've heard many more bad flimsy ballads since 1975.)

And speaking of end-of-the-alphabet rock, this came in via email at the end of last week. The Hill and Beard quotes at the bottom are pretty amusing:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played "stump the band" with the audience on April 21 at TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. They were not stumped by a fan's request to perform ZZ Top's great "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide" as this account confirms. (There's video of the performance, too, so check it out):

\http://www.nj.com/springsteen/index.ssf/2009/04/boston_video_of_bruce_springst.html

Bruce had performed the song only once before at a regular E Street Band show, on Sept. 15, 1984 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
He did play it an handful of times at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park in 1984 and 1987

Here's the E Street Band's earlier (1984) crack at the ZZ evergreen (audio only):

Lastly, here's the band's account of how the song, which first appeared as a track on their 1979 release Deguello, came to be:

Billy Gibbons: “We saw a performance one evening, featuring Freddie King. At the conclusion of the show, we were attempting to describe the fierce intensity of that night’s experience – that kind of omnipotent ‘badness’ that is of a universal proportion. This seemed like the way to go.”

Dusty Hill: “You don’t want ‘I’m Bad, I’m Regional.’ People know that bad isn’t really a negative. Are you bad in a little pond? You could be bad worldwide, but it doesn’t sound as good as ‘nationwide.’ I like the ‘gold-tooth-display’ line. A lot of bling.”

Frank Beard: “’Gold-tooth display’ was ahead of the curve.”

Awesome.

I recall seeing Bruce around then at the Spectrum. Beer fell like rain from the upper decks, the restrooms were a catastrophe and the man had discovered weight-lifting.

Plus the habit of repeating popular choruses fifty times and the art of making a four and half hour show seem like six, right in there with Hot Tuna.

That Spitballs comp sounds cool! In response to Chuck's (?) - Gino Is A Coward is by Gino Washington (not to be confused with Geno Washington), a Detroit R&B greasy soul stomper type, big regional hit, I think. Great song. His "Out Of This World" is pretty awesome too.

Glad to hear someone else is on an Eagle Rock kick!

Listening to a tour-only live disc by The Answer, recorded in December 2007. They're joined by Paul Rodgers on two songs - covers of "I'm a Mover" and "The Hunter."

new dolls album is out. does anyone care?

Considering how hard the last one sucked, probably not.

I got the new Rhino Bucket album in today's mail. Current drummer is ex-AC/DC, current guitarist ex-Kix. Haven't listened to it yet, but it's a safe bet that it sounds like late '80s AC/DC.

I'd definitely be more interested in hearing the new Rhino Bucket (whose 2006 album rocked) more than the new New York Dolls (whose 2006 album didn't.) (I was going to call it Rhino Bucket's "previous" album, but apparently they put out two more albums last year I never heard of. So when did they get rid of Jackie Enx, their transexual drummer? She was good --which is not to say Simon Wright is chopped liver.)

Meanwhile, Talas's 1982 Sink Your Teeth Into That (on Relativity, bought for $1 of course) might fit in better on Rolling Metal than here if people on Rolling Metal talked about old stuff much. They were the first band featuring Billy Sheehan to get recorded; this was their second album, between a limited edition self-released one and a live one that Martin Popoff claims were worse. (I've never heard those.) I have a vague memory of reading a review in Option or somewhere else non-metal in the early '80s that compared them to Blue Cheer, which is silly -- They're not even all that noisy, and they're not very bloozeful either. Maybe whoever wrote it was just looking at the picture on the back. "Hit And Run" has a wee bit of Bad Company vibe to it maybe, but mostly they're closer to a U.S. power-trio equivalent of NWOBHM. (How come there was no NWOAHM, btw? Is the point that metal had never died in the US? But it had never really died in the UK either, right? I guess they just like inventing new genre names more there.) Fastest songs are probably "High Speed On Ice" (how come pre-thrash '80s metal bands -- up through Metallica, I guess -- liked ice so much? Though this title brings to mind hockey more than freezing to death) and "Shy Boy" (which Sheehan later brought to David Lee Roth's first solo album, which makes sense since it basically sounds like a fast Van Halen track.) "NW4 3345" is just Sheehan wacking off on his bass, the only time he really does that (so I don't know why Popoff complains about the band being bassist-led so much.) "Smart Lady" seems to concern a lady smart enough to take her clothes off for money, but I didn't attend to it closely enough to make sure. And closer "Hick Town" concerns growing up in one and needing to get out, and is kind of cool because Jason Aldean's first metal-guitared country hit a couple years ago had exactly the same name. Anyway, like lots of early '80s indie-label metal from both sides of the pond, this LP is endearing in its low-budget cluelessness. What a weird time for the genre.

Talas was such a big deal in upstate New York back in the 80s.

Head East, self-titled album, 1978, A&M, $1: So has there ever been a government-funded study about the relationship between mid/late-career self-titled albums (when in a perfect world only debuts should be allowed to be self-titled) and record labels "putting their foot down"? Maybe there should be. Because that's kind of what this sounds like, at least compared to earlier Head East LPs I've heard (including one I talk about above) where you get the idea the band was having way more fun. So maybe it's also just that they were getting tired, or had a contract obligation to meet. In some ways, it's more consistently "hard rock" than those earlier albums, but also more by-by-the-book/four-square about it for the most part, give or take the excellent 5:41 heavy closer "Elijah." Still worth hanging onto for that, and for what's technically their biggest pop hit (if not their obvious legacy song), i.e., their take on Russ Ballard's hard-pop readymade "Since You Been Gone," which Rainbow also just missed going Top 40 with a year later. Otherwise, I actually think I might prefer this record's second side (where they get a little bit more ballady and jazzy, less run-through-the-motions meat-and-potatoes) to the first.

It's difficult to dress up Talas albums. No one in the band could write. There wasn't an iota of charm in anything committed to vinyl. At best, one might say Talas was a live showcase for Billy Sheehan. I had them. Understand why they were big in bars and as openers in upstate New York. They were "rock musicians." They had lotsa equipment. Someone was going to make it out of there and do OK.

Okay, this is for you chuck! seeing as how i have a promo copy of spitballs with the promo press release inside it with all the info. for the record, 14 Beserkley artists performed on the album and THEY ALL PLAY INSTRUMENTS ON EVERY SONG. so, every song has 7 or eight guitars playing, four drummers, etc. Here is who SANG LEAD on every track:

i can only give you everything (them) - royse ader (rubinoos)

gino is a coward (gino washington) - larry lynch (greg kihn band)

over and over (bobby day) - steve wright (greg kihn band)

life's too short (the lafayettes) - greg kihn

feel too good (the move) - john doukas (earth quake)

boris the spider (the who) - donn spindt (rubinoos)

way over there (the miracles) - asa brebner (modern lovers)

just like me (paul revere & raiders) - john rubin (rubinoos)

chapel of love (dixie cups) - jonathan richman

batman theme - d.sharpe (modern lovers)

bad moon rising (ccr) - sean tyla (tyla gang)

knock on wood (eddie floyd) - sean tyla & john doukas

i want her so bad (psychotic pineapple) - tommy dunbar (rubinoos)

let her dance (bobby fuller 4) - gary phillips (earth quake)

telstar (tornadoes) - lead guitar by dave carpender (greg kihn band)

there, more than you will ever need to know about Spitballs!

also, my press release comes with a lengthy august 28th, 1978 review in New West by Greil Marcus. he really liked it. "Probably Spitballs will be no more commercially successful than the invisible tunes it celebrates - and that is altogether fitting. The Bee Gees will not make room on the charts for it. But then, there are those who feel that the charts no longer make room for THEM."

(although Greil would only have to wait until the beginning of 1979 to see a cover of "Knock On Wood" take over the universe...)

Hmmm, "Knock On Wood" is on the Earth Quake best of, Sittin' In the Middle of Madness. It's definitely John Doukas on vocals, not Sean Tyla. Mebbe he played guitar.

Asa Brebner more 'well known' for being in Robin Lane & the Chartbusters.

Station break: My current events funny pages. Be sure not to miss 'Sit Home and Rot.' Which, yes, was tkane from Murphy's Law, from the best song Jimmy Gestapo ever wrote.

Got a book recommendation for y'all: Steve Waksman's This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk. It's basically a slightly more academic and way less polemical Rock and the Pop Narcotic, talking about the points of conjunction between metal and punk from 1970 through the mid-1990s. I'll list the chapter titles so you'll get where the guy's coming from:

1. Staging the Seventies: Arena Rock, Punk Rock (in this one he talks about Nuggets and Grand Funk Railroad)
2. Death Trip: Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, and Rock Theatricality
3. The Teenage Rock 'n' Roll Ideal: The Dictators and the Runaways
4. Metal, Punk, and Motörhead: The Genesis of Crossover
5. Time Warp: The New Wave of British Heavy Metal
6. Metal/Punk Reformation: Three Independent Labels (the labels covered are SST, Metal Blade, and Sub Pop)
7. Louder, Faster, Slow It Down!: Metal, Punk, and Musical Aesthetics

I'm midway through the Alice 'n' Iggy chapter, and it's great. The guy's writing style is engaging and never academia-dry, and obviously the subject matter is right up my alley (shit, I thought about writing this book at one point; I'm still planning on writing a book arguing that rock and soul from 1970-75 are vastly better than rock and soul from 1964-69, and that it's been all downhill since '75).

Hmmm, "Knock On Wood" is on the Earth Quake best of, Sittin' In the Middle of Madness. It's definitely John Doukas on vocals, not Sean Tyla. Mebbe he played guitar.

Definitely fucked myself up on this one. Phil's entry made me drag out my Earth Quake stuff, because it is so rock and soul, and -- boy -- did I mess up.

It is Sean Tyla on vocals. John Doukas of Earth Quake backs him up... and that's the reason it
works. Tyla doesn't have the Mitch Ryder voice. But Doukas does. And it comes through enough to make this stdio vamp work.

Now, Martin Popovic slags Doukas in his 'metal' books because he doesn't really get Earth Quake. Earth Quake's lead singer is John Doukas. Doukas sounds to me like he was mostly imprinted by Mitch
Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. And Popovic has never understood Detroit rock 'n' soul.

Like Christgau's blindspot blocking him from writing anything credible about hard guitar music,
Martin Popovic doesn't 'get' any singer from Motown in a hard rock format. Instead, he 'gets' Ted Nugent's worst vocals as being the best of a Detroit thing. Someone who is like Mitch Ryder, to Popovic, sounds like someone having pitch problems.

And that may have been Earth Quake's sin, to Popovic. They did hard rock and soul with a Mitch Ryder-esque singer right in the middle of the Seventies. Right when that stuff was not gonna get any
kudos or push.

As to G. Marcus writing something favorable about Spitballs. Wow. That would have been
the kiss of death, all things considered in terms of who was writing about what in terms of hard rock. Seriously.

There are some people who, if you take them seriously, are just the kind of people who would
discourage you from writing enthusiastically about hard rock music. They are virtual poison
re hard rock.

Griel Marcus was one of them. He's the antithesis of someone who would have liked hard rock when it was being formed. He's not even a serious heavy duty journalist.

Believe whatever shit pseudo-scholars tells you. Or not.

I'm still planning on writing a book arguing that rock and soul from 1970-75 are vastly better than rock and soul from 1964-69, and that it's been all downhill since '75.

i would gladly buy this book.

Ha ha, I totally disagree with Phil's thesis on multiple levels ("all downhill since '80" might have validity, though), but I'd enjoy seeing him try to make the case. (As for that "metal and punk crossover and conflict" book, I already wrote one of those, and mine had more conflict built into it. But if I see this one cheap, I might check it out...)

Been listening to American Beat's new CD reissues of three Del-Lords albums from the '80s, which don't start out hard rock but sort of end up there, plus Scott Kempner from the Dictators and Eric Ambel from Joan Jett's Blackhearts were in the band, so I guess they belong here more than on the country thread.

Big surprise is how dull the 1984 debut Frontier Days (a Christgau A-, and a ridiculous #26 -- 12 places higher than the Del Fuegos! -- in the 1984 Pazz & Jop Poll) is, compared to their two later Neil "Mr. Benatar To You" Geraldo-produced later albums (both Xgau B+'s), and especially 1988's indie-label Based On A True Story, which Kempner's liner notes claim was their biggest seller "by quite a bit" and which "spawned the almost hit 'Judas Kiss'," which I like (it's about a buddy hooked on crack I think), but which didn't make the Hot 100.

Anyway, the acclaimed debut sounds surprisingly bland to me, and really pissed me off when I first put it on even though I'd always assumed the band kind of stunk -- almost proto-alt-country, like an attempt at Jason and the Scorchers-style cowpunk but with no rock hooks left, or like the washed-up later Replacements a few years early; the Reagan-recession-era update of Blind Alfred Reed's '20s depression blues "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live" is a clever idea, I guess, and "I Play The Drums" and "Mercenary" might come off as smart songs if somebody had actually sprung for a production budget. 1986's Johnny Comes Marching Home is where they first get Geraldo, and it sounds better (especially the rockabilly/Stones economy-commentary back-to-back "No Waitress No More"/"Some Summer") but still not good enough. But on Based On A True Story (with cameos from Benatar, Syd Straw, Mojo Nixon, and the Pandoras' Kim Shattuck) the sound finally gets fleshed out, and the band comes off both looser and more confident, and their Bronx/ Lower East Side greaser schtick finally has humor in it. The pretty melodies finally click, too: "Ashes To Ashes" reminds me of the great early '80s Terri Gibbs blues-country song of the same name, but the one whose jangle puts a lump in my throat every time is "Cheyenne," re: "a city boy in God's country."

Also been listening to Shot In The Dark, the sophomore LP from England late-pub-rock garage wavers the Inmates, who'd hit pretty big on Stateside rock radio with their cover of the Standells' "Dirty Water" the year before. (That single went #51; debut LP First Offence went #49, and two other songs from that debut -- "Mr. Unreliable" and "The Walk" -- got AOR airplay in Detroit, though possibly not anywhere else.) Anyway, the second LP is good, but never charted. Sounds like the main attempts to follow up "Dirty Water" were a good cover of another famous garage nugget, the Music Machine's "Talk Talk" (which lots of new wave bands did around that time) and the hard early-Stones-style "Stop It Baby"; they also interpret Jagger/Richard's "So Much In Love." And maybe they figured Michigan was where to shoot for, so they do versions of the soul perennial "(She's) Some Kind of Wonderful" (previously covered by Grand Funk) and Junior Parker's "Feelin' Good" (previously covered by Brownsville Station as "Martian Boogie," though I personally prefer it with martians.) Plus they pull off a respectable J. Geils-type soul-rock ballad called "Sweet Rain." (Geils were even bigger in Detroit than in their hometown Boston, as I recall.)

(First Inmates LP was 1979, btw; second was '80, and cost me $1.)

All I could remember by the Del-Lords until you mentioned them longishly was "I Play the Drums" and "Judas Kiss," both making the biggest impression live when I saw 'em open for the Georgia Satellites. (Who, obviously, were really really really better.) Third, I guess, "How Can A Poor Boy". Had the albums, probably thought most of the first, now don't miss them at all. For supposedly bringin' the vintage rock and roll, they really didn't. Too mild-mannered, too reverential, I dunno. Bad time for getting someone to produce, mix and master stuff like that so it worked and I'm not so sure they were up to the do-it-yourself thing. A Mutt Lange was needed. That said, they're natural for American Beat. One might say they no are a poor man's Tommy Conwell & the Young
Rumblers, who did get appropriate production and mixology years later. And maybe that was all the difference.

last night i listened to:

fandango - last kiss (rca - 1978) starring the king of aor joe lynn turner. great red lips picture disc. approaches lite-bad company territory at times, but it's mostly smooth and slick. actually sounds like they were listening to a lot of little feat when they made this album.

original mirrors - s/t (arista - 1980) kinda new wave poprock. need to listen again sober.

alexis - s/t (mca - 1977) looks promising and it sorta rocks, but mostly dud songs.

easy street - under the glass (capricorn - 1977) capricorn album i'd never heard. not bad. not great. some okay southern guitar stuff on it.

josh leo - rockin' on 6th (WB - 1983) detroit by way of L.A.? springsteen everydude rock - songs like "workin' class", "two car garage". but check out his backing vocalists: mary clayton, bonnie raitt, timothy b. schmit, j.d. souther, wendy waldman. kinda looks like a young dick destiny on the cover.

bandit - partners in crime (ariola - 1978) kinda thought this might be cool too what with the blazing six guns on the cover, but it's mostly mellow stuff.

shakin' street - s/t (cbs - 1980) you are all familiar. solid as a rock was my jam last night.

flame - s/t (rca - 1978) not bad jimmy crespo rock with female vocals, but this don't sound like stevie nicks. or aerosmith.

so, weirdly, the surprise of the night for me was listening to a shadowfax album from 1976 on passport. watercourse way. SERIOUSLY high flying guitar prog that will make you dizzy. i dug it. i'd only heard their later stuff and that stuff is way more mellow and serene. this shit is prog noodle heaven. if you like that sort of thing.