Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

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.

I like that Shadowfax LP, too! I never even listened to them at all before, but Lalena had her copy in a giveaway pile when we were about to leave Queens, and I checked it out and was really surprised. (Why the heck my wife had a Shadowfax LP is a really good question, though she's a major prog fan. She said she hadn't listened to it in a long time, and wasn't sure why she'd kept it. Anyway, it's mine now.)

The Flame LP I have (their only one that charted) is called Queen Of The Neighborhood from '77. I like it, or did last time I listened to it, and it has a really hot Brooklyn-tough-chick-on-the-stoop- with-her-'hood-pals LP cover to match the title.

Not sure whether I ever owned Original Mirrors, but I can picture its bespectacled LP cover in my head. And I love that Shakin Street LP more than George does. (He's a Vampire Rock purist, I believe.)

Actually, the Shadowfax Watercourse Way LP I have is a vinyl reissue from '85, on Windham Hill! Making its likeability even more surprising to me.

dick destiny's younger brother, maybe?

http://i9.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/45/fc/923b_1.JPG

Speaking of Dick Destiny, could've sworn his alter ego wrote up a roundup of Nutz reissues once whilst I was at the Voice, but Google is not helping me locate it, so maybe I just dreamed it. Either way, Hard Nutz (A&M, 1977, promo pressing, $1) is quite possibly as hard-rocking an album as any on this thread, but it's also proggier (or at least pompier) than I'd anticipated, given their seemingly punkish moniker. Reference points would perhaps include Heep, Nuge, Faces/Humble Pie (for "Pushed Around"), heavy Suvvern funk rock (for "Sick And Tired" of rock'n'roll it turns out); closer "One More Cup Of Coffee" makes White Stripes' version sounds like kindergartners in comparison and probably out-heavies any Dylan cover I've heard this side of Nazareth's "Ballad Of Hollis Brown." But the real shitkicker -- honestly, probably belongs on any historical short list of hard-rock classics when you get down to it -- is Side One closer "Wallbanger," which probably has nothing to do with interrogation via the method of swinging torturees by their necks and banging them against walls, but sort of sounds like it could. Oliver and Jasper call the Brits "a proverbial support band" and say "Wallbanger" was "their most impressive cut"; apparently this was their third LP out of four, including a live one.

Popoff compares the album to REO and Head East, too (along with Humble Pie and Ted), looks like; he seems to be saying Nutz's earlier albums were better, but this one is heavier. (He gives it a 7/6; mentions Sensational Alex Harvey/Skyhooks/Atomic Rooster/Budgie in his review of their '74 debut; adds Sweet and Queen for their '75 followup and Bad Company for their '77 live bow. I never heard those.)

Golden Earring, The Hole (21 Records, 1986) -- No "Radar Love," no "Twilight Zone," no "Candy's Going Bad," and much of it sounds phoned-in, so not a great Golden Earring LP, but not a bad one either (and I've never heard one that was). They really seem their own thing, somehow, naturals to adapt to dance-oriented '80s AOR even if some songs here seem like they're trying to keep up with Phil Collins-platinum-era Genesis (those cheesy horn charts in "Love In Motion") and maybe the Police. But they're always totally listenable, and always have interesting rhythmic ideas (most obviously here in the 6:30 "Jump & Run.") Still not sure to what extent English was a foreign language for them. Alan Neister in the Rolling Stone Record Guide approved of them, but called them "hopelessly derivative," saying they borrowed their main riffs from Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, but I'm honestly not sure I've ever heard the connections; those groups were way artier, for one thing. (And I say that as somebody who actually thinks Tull did plenty of rocking stuff.) I did always like how Neister branded "Radar Love" "a fusion of Canned Heat and Kraftwerk," though, even if my ears tell me otherwise. Bottom line, I don't think any critic I've ever read has ever gotten to the bottom of the Earring aesthetic. Which makes them neat, somehow.

Actually, reading back, that does sound like I'm kind of damning The Hole with faint praise -- and if I were to grade all the G.E. LPs I'd heard on a curve, it would admittedly not fare so well. (Also just noticed that Popoff devotes more than two whole pages to 11 of their albums in his '70s book; I should re-read those reviews sometime, probably.)

Skimming, I notice Popoff mentions Pink Floyd a few times, too; so it must be there somewhere. Maybe I'd notice it more if I listened to Pink Floyd more. (Also should note that The Hole is definitely not as metal or loud-guitared as much of their '70s output, but that never stood in the way of their earlier '80s LPs I've heard. Actually think GE's long career trajectory has something in common with Slade's. And I like Slade's '80s LPs too, actually.)

The Flame LPs, there were two, should be reissued. Marge Raymond, I think, was the name of the vocalist. And she was really somethin'. On one of them, she sang "This Old Heart of Mine."

dick destiny's younger brother, maybe?

Eesh, no. Actually, the guys on the cover of the first and second J. Geils Band
albums were more of a template.

As for Nutz, I mentioned the first album in passing for the 9/11 issue. And the first was the best of the four. They changed their name and simplified for the NWOBHM, becoming Rage. But that didn't work, either. They did so many things, they never had a unified tone, which was impressive in its musicality, but no some much for leaving an indelibe impression with at least one side of relentless anything. Some boogie, some prog, some hard pop, undistinguished singer, good guitar player. Didn't have much of a yen for big hooks.

I've put Flame's "This Old Heart" on several mixtapes. Can't remember any other song on the LP.

I've hung on to "Hard Nutz" through numerous purges of the collection (mostly 'cause it wouldn't sell for anything) and yeah, the two cuts I remember are "Cup Of Coffee" and "Wallbanger."

"It's All Over," the album closer, was also good stampeding rock. Not only semi-famous for contributing Jimmy Crespo to dissipating Aerosmith, but Thommy Price on drums eventually into Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Where he still is, I think.

For some reason, I always thinks of 1994, too, when Flame comes up. 1994 in same
vein for debut, some Aerosmith influence, some Heart, a great deal of dramatic orchestrated arrangement. Less dirty rock 'n' roll than Flame but they got more mileage out of it. But not that much more. By the time of their album, the first band had been sacked for others -- some nondescript bunch called the Sunset Bombers -- to back up the woman in spandex and leather with wailing voice. Tried for a single with a title cut, "Please Stand By," which after said album when radically downhill compared to the first.

By the time of their album

By the time of their -next- album, actually...

Still not sure to what extent English was a foreign language for them.

G.E. singer (since 1967) Barry Hay was born and raised (including an English education) in India and came to Holland when he was ten years old. He speaks Dutch with a slight English accent, although I'm not really sure whether it's genuine or just faux-r'n'r posturing.

1994!! Wow, I have both albums, plus Karen Lawrence's earlier band LA Jets (not very good at all) and later foray into new wave with The Pinz. Plus a 45 of "Prisoner (Captured By Your Eyes)" which was a nice rock ballad from the flick "Eyes Of Laura Mars." Guess i was a lille obsessive for a while there! Streisand even covered "Prisoner," but I've never heard that.

Tried a few times to get into First Water by Sharks (MCA, 1973, Andy Fraser from Free on vocals and bass, a pre-punk Chris Spedding on guitar), but no dice -- it's just all gruffy stodged-to-the-gills midtempo medium-level blues snooze, like Joe Cocker or somebody. Maybe a couple nifty time-changes in "Follow Me" or "Snakes And Swallowtails," and maybe a halfway interesting lyric in "World Park Junkies," but more likely not. No hooks to speak of.

but you tried! and that's what counts.

You did 'get' the best two tunes, "World Park Junkies" and "Snakes & Swallowtails."
Do not advance to second album, "Jab It In Your Eye," with Busta Cherry Jones replacing Fraser, which is worse. Busta Cherry Jones. Hard to believe, but true, there was a doof who actually called himself that and people in bands stupid enough to let him get away with it.

Do not advance to Baker-Gurvitz Army, which is where Snips -- Sharks singer -- went afterwards when Baker and the Gurvitzes realized they couldn't sing. Except for "Mad Jack" which wasn't sung, anyway.

i like the baker-gurvitz army albums with snips. but i am an unabashed gurvitz fanboy. and snips could sing. but songwriting, along with singing, was also not baker/gurvitz strong suit. actually, adrian wasn't THAT bad a singer. he even had a hit in the 80's with a ballad that he wrote and sung.

Yeah, I bought Baker-Gurvitz Army by impulse, while looking for Three Man Army, also barely remembered a favorable Creem reviews from their more credible years, and thought it was okay (well worth the fifty cents). Busta Cherry Jones was a valued pick-up muso (hence the name?), for inst, subbed at the last minute on a Gang Of Four tour, which the other Three were dreading, but he learned their catalogue immediately and they thought shows with him some of their best ever. Sharks was frought, imploded quickly, prob didn't get along in the studio at all, no wonder bout album. Another advantage of living down in the boobdocks is getting to hear bands like these(although I haven't heard much of their studio work; this is another of my show previews)

When American Dog first humped Columbus, OH in 1999, their territory was already well-marked. Not only did they follow in the pawprints of a roving pack, sniffing the roaring remains of biker-blessed metal and southern rock, they also shredded their own anti-pedigree. Singer-bassist Michael Hannon had gotten way off the chain with Dangerous Toys, Salty Dog, and especially Hilljack, those graphically unrepentant, burning poster children who continue to inspire American Dog’s eternally dying breed. Hannon still growls strenuously and sardonically, while equally experienced guitarist Steve Theado and drummer Keith Pickens chew through anything.

but songwriting, along with singing, was also not baker/gurvitz strong suit.

Heh. 'Nuff said. Album art was over half the sale. If you liked murkily produced hard rock art and jazz, they did that well. As said, I think "Mad Jack" was their high point, an elongation of Baker's "Press Rat & Wart Hog" story-telling about the weird style.

Baker-Gurvitz Army were one of those bands theoretically designed to appeal to progressive FM radio.

One can imagine them as part of the subject in the segment from "That Thing You Do" where the Wonders get sent to an obscure jazzoid radio station and Ronnie Howard's brother asks them what 'broke their cherry.' And everyone has an inane answer except for Shades who says, 'Del Paxton,' and Howard nods and says, 'Yeah, Del Paxton, baby!' Fast forward six or seven years, and one of the band members says 'Baker-Gurvitz' and the Howard character, in the same tone, replies, 'Yeah, Baker-Gurvitz, maaan.'

honestly, it's all about the guitars for me. and i do love ginger's thumping. he's a jammer. songs just get in the way. although he certainly knows how to back up a good tune. a la cream or my fave masters of reality album sunrise on the sufferbus. i need to listen to that album he made where fela kuti shows up out of the blue. i like that one. i remember buying those airforce albums when i was a little kid cuz i loved the covers and being bored to tears by them.

plus, i just think it was cool that the gurvitz bros found another freaky redhead to bond with. and, wait, was snips a redhead too? he had a bad redhead-esque fro.

I hadn't thought about "Pressed Rat and Warthog" in years, or any of Cream's twee output. Was my favorite songs for about a month when I 14.

Sunrise On The Sufferbus is indeed a hoot, mon! Checkitout.

you guys like the werewolves? andrew loog oldham's attempt to create a nu-stones. i only have the second album and i like it. interweb descriptions of the first album say it's not as good or as rockin' as the 2nd album. 2nd album is from 1978. gorge must remember them.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UKcphlQpavE/R3xhXWv4cWI/AAAAAAAAALM/3XErSColQ1w/s400/Cover.bmp

and some of their stonesy moments, like on the song "summer weekends", are way better than, like, black crowes stonesy moments. tighter and poppier and less shaggy.

this seems a little hard to believe, but i'd never heard the suicide commandos make a record on blank before until recently. i really dig it. i was gonna sell this copy for my brother, but they don't sell for a ton and i think i might have to keep it. plus, then, i would own the entire blank records discography of two albums.

I have never heard the Suicide Commandosor the Werewolves, I don't think! And here I thought I was up on new wave hard rock. I am so out of it.

I do own the other album on Blank, though (and even know what it is.)

Btw, Don, George definitely did an American Dog writeup at the Voice a few years back (he's an even bigger fan of them than I am), but I haven't been able to track down a link on the Internets.

And in case anybody missed it, here is another thread where Golden Earring were discussed this week (followed by an old thread started by George before that I didn't think I'd ever seen before, but I must have, seeing how I eventually posted on it and all):

Stand Up and Be Counted in the Epic Golden Earring Showdown: Radar Love vs. Twilight Zone

Where is the love for Golden Earring?

suicide commandos album is really great. in the same vein as my fave akron bands rubber city rebels and bizarros. they even have a song called kidnapped! they were from minneapolis though.

best video ever made by any band ever:

interweb descriptions of the first album say it's not as good or as rockin' as the 2nd album. 2nd album is from 1978. gorge must remember them.

They're rubbish, the ratings, not the Werewolves. I had both, listened to the first one more because it had better songs. The second may have been a bit harder sounding. They were in the same vein as Tears who are in need of a very limited edition remaster.

Look up my Monster Records sampler review. That's where American Dog was dealt with.

This made me laugh. What the Internet is really good at: Making sure the most obscure sidemen get their hagiographic biographical entry on Wikipedia. Erik Cartwright, guitarist for the really shitty Foghat LPs was one of the guys in Tears. And another journeyman band, Bux, who wound up being sidemen for Joe Perry and Kim Simmonds in one of the shorter-lived incarnations of Savoy Brown.

xp Actually Outlaw Records. (Monster was the label that reissued obscure heavy sludge bands of the early '70s, as I recall):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-01-14/music/ride-hard-die-hard/

oh and i meant to post this info about the suicide commandos video:

"one nightin the fall of '77, the Minnetonka Fire Department burned down the condemned Utopia House--the legendary Commandos HQ that the band had rented for $30 a month. Knowing it would happen, the band wrote one of its finest anthems for the occasion--"Burn It Down"--shooting a video for the song with the flaming house as a live backdrop"

Holy moley! Every time I go out to the Village Voice they've worked even harder at making the website user hostile. I didn't think it was possible, but the webmasters keep upping their game. If they work even harder, maybe Google can be persuaded to put a little "This website may be harmful to your computer" warning on search results from it.

Have to have a really old computer that does not grok the fancies. Links in original aren't enabled, I'd be informed too much BBCode.
Ride Hard, Die Hard
Under-the-Table-Again Rock
George Smith
Tuesday, January 14th 2003
photo: Dee Lippingwell
Randy Rampage is not a dead boy.
Randy Rampage is not a dead boy.
Details:
Raw Trax 02: 100 Proof Ass-Kicking Rock & Roll
Outlaw Entertainment import
Raw wrath and metal roll always win out. No matter how retro or staid, the best hard rock in 2002, by far, came from those who instinctively grasped that respect must be paid to ground broken in the mid '70s, not only by the big guns but also by the toilers and failures. Which brings us right to Raw Trax 02, a compilation whose contributors fall so neatly into the category of biker rock that one envisions them all deeply influenced by AC/DC, Nazareth, Moontan Golden Earring, and the Don Brewer-produced Godz.
Four bands deliver; a fifth is rotten, and will be shunned for the duration of this review. (They're at the tail end of the disc, so no one has to endure them to hear the good stuff.)

But first off is American Dog, of the corny name but distinctly un-corny bluesoid metal. The beats on "TV Disease" and "Shitkicker" are locked in, living on the highway. Blown out of the water as Salty Dog a dozen years ago by the Nirvana revolution, the sound is now stripped anti-Hollywood middle-American. The band knows that their place isn't selling anything but live music for the near to down-and-out, and they do it pretty well. They probably work in tattoo shops that are infrequently closed down by health inspectors.

And even that's not as scary as Billy Butcher, an old-fashioned Billy Gibbons-style songwriter and axman who acts like the last decade never happened. Way beyond the Black Keys, "Stateside Walking Shoes" squanks along like an engine with one scored cylinder backfiring against the other five—in a good way. Even better, when you expect Butcher to get all hackneyed and start singing about leaving trunks or one bourbon, one shot, and one beer, he reaches for the Benzedrine. Johnny Winter And . . . is hidden under the pillow, too, I bet.

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Billy Butcher
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Billy Gibbons
I thought Randy Rampage was dead and apparently everyone else did, too, because Raw Trax goes to great lengths to assure the listener his contributions aren't posthumous. He used to be in DOA (or the Subhumans, maybe, or Annihilator?), and he's Canadian, I think. So he names a song "Bytor," but it doesn't sound like Rush. I bet he always wanted to do that. Rampage also does AC/DC with a barrelhouse electric pianer tinkling along in the background. Plus a Dead Boys cover, which every decent gin-joint act should be up to.

And, finally, what would an accidental monument to the Godz be without a God?

Raw exhumed Eric Moore, who many believed deceased, too. But he was probably just in jail, judging from his song "Criminal Mind." Moore's Godz remain true-blue meatheads, still playing "Mongolians" from the mid '80s, a song probably left off of 1979's Nothing Is Sacred. The Godz remain the missing link between Black Oak Arkansas and David Lee Roth—a dubious classification except to those who like to imagine hirsute fiends scaring tourists in Hollister between recuperative naps in the back of a squad car. In other words, Godz-metal is the rock and roll you get from a bunch who are a hybrid of the exaggerated plug-uglies Phillo Beddo harassed in Every Which Way but Loose and Billy Jack kicked in the teeth in Born Losers. Indispensable.

(More by George listed after this credit for something)
Outlaw Entertainment International Inc., 101-1001 West Broadway, department 400, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 4E4, outlawentertainment.com

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Yikes!

Back in the analog world: New England, self-titled LP, Infinity, 1979: Supermelodic (like, post-Boston at points, also maybe a little post-Queen to go with the inevitable post-Styx etc.) pomp AOR, complete with a superdupermelodic hit single "Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya," which just barely squeezed into the Top 40. But my two favorite cuts are probably the OTT-tempoed "Shoot" and the maybe even more so "P.U.N.K.," which stands for "Puny Undernourished Kid" and I swear revolves around a subliminal (maybe accidental?) (maybe imaginary? you decide) Sex Pistols riff. But of course it's all Billy Joel-style resentment about the stupid younger-brother generation: "You've got chains for brains/When you eat 714s for supper/Hey kid, you're only 16/And you've got too many lovers/Don't put salt in your wounds/If you're trying to make things better." Good advice! (And 714s were of course 'ludes, at least as much a metal drug as a punk drug where I grew up.)

Also talked a little about a live CD by them a couple years ago:

Rolling Metal Thread 2007, Part II

Hey hope I didn't get to presumptious posting that, Gorge. Great piece, anyway, I'll have to check out that comp (and Zolar X! WE need a glam thread!)

Re the Zolar X reunion, Make sure you don't pay full price. It's entertaining but ... one of those things you won't wind up listening to more than a handful of times. Kind of like the original. It shares the glam as done by the Lee Harvey Oswald Band phenom: You put on Blastronaut, listen to "Surrender Earthlings" five times in a row, exclaim 'This out-Spiders the Spiders from Mars!' and an hour later you put on Ziggy and never come back to them.

Jasper and Oliver label '70s threesome American Tears "plod pomp" in their book, and listening to Tear Gas (Columbia, 1975), I'd have to say they hit the bullseye with that one, even though a couple moments (the title track, and parts of "Serious Blue Boy {Sail On}" before it starts sounding like "Jesus Christ Superstar") pick up at least a little beyond plodding. Not much power -- especially guitar power -- to their power trio, either. Too bad, since I like their gas masks on the cover, and they have pretty intriguing song titles (also "The War Lover," "Franki And The Midget"), and my $1 copy caame a neat sheet of band stickers inside. Not sure off hand if they're better or worse than, say, Bighorn or Aviary (both of whom came later), but either way their prog lacks much to grab ahold of.