Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

re: The Martin C. Strong Great Discographies are ridiculously useful. Half-Price Books had all of them several years ago. "Alternative & Indie", "Metal", "Psychedelic" and "Rock". Massive books with complete Discographies, memberships and histories of bands you never heard of and the most famous.

A random list of acts in Metal Marshall Law, Mary Beats Jane, Massacre, Masters of Reality, Max Webster, May Blitz, Mayhem, MC5, Duff McKagan, MDC. The writing has some humor and opinion to keep it from getting too dry, but I think I most enjoy reading about all the second and third tier UK musicians and how they moved from group to group throughout the 70s.

Have just been listening to the recent reissue of Shakin' Street's Vampire Rock, allegedly only '999'
copies, off a Euro imprint. The US debut, their second -- which repeats some of the numbers from this -- was produced by Sandy Pearlman of BOC and had much more of polished heavy metal whoosh to it, plus Ross the Boss, who added standard grade excellent Ross the Boss solos. Vampire Rock has a much rawer, violent sound. There's no big cushion of arenaverb on the guitars, so it actually fits the tone of the time better than the Pearlman produced thing.

No "Suzie Wong" -- Shakin' Street's best tune. But substitutes more speed and boogie, "Celebration 2000,"
"Love Song," sounding much more recorded under the influence of sulfates. Plus nothing on the second on CBS quite like "Blues is the Same," where Shine plays a little harmonica. Come to think of it, the original solos by Frenchmen sound very Ross the Boss-ian, either indicating they listened to the Dictators a lot, or they just alike melodically, or they were yanked from their duties for who knows now what reasons.

Like Telephone, Shakin' Street showed the French could do hard rock 'n' roll real good. However, the chirpy and fluty singing style which seemed to go with French acts of the time was met with no curiosity or patience here.

Lotsa crunch and crash on this record, though.

And if you think my posts look dyslexic in spots -- they do -- it's because of ILX's crippled format, or mine, depending upon your point of view. The ILX message box slides off the right side of my browser screen into a blind spot. And I'm sick of constantly having to readjust it with style sheets changes in the 'preferences' tab, changes which don't stick because of buggy software, on my end or its end, who cares.

But back to Vampire Rock -- which still kills thirty-one years later. Version of the Stones' "Yesterday's Papers" which also surpasses most of the imagination shown on the Pearlman-produced domestic release. I knew I liked the first record more for many reasons -- see xhuck's gut feeling upstream re my taste -- and these are some of them.

See here now, xhuxk, Uriah Heep's "Look at Yourself" is a fast shuffle,
not a Latin beat although I see where you'd get that in 'tinge' from the drum break and coda played by the dudes from Osibisa. Who were from Africa.

And, actually, Pete Townshend's flurrying guitar style is, and he's done it on TV, derived from flamenco playing. The fast da-d-da-daa stuff in open and
down strokes which is present on just about all Who recordings -- which apparently was picked up from someone in his family, like dad (?) or early lessons.

in open and down strokes

Make that 'in up and down strokes'.

The current most vital poor man's Jimi, as per above. The CD Baby offering of the Anthony Aquarius Mystery. It's no mystery his lyrics are a hoot, perhaps unintentionally so. "Love Bathed Experience" and the piece de resistance, "She's All Sheep."

"He even plays left-handed. Strung upside down as Jimi did. A great CD fom (sic) start to finish."

Lenny Kravitz, quit now.

Our boys in uniform try to rock. Oy vey.

Born to be mild

Hooo boy.

I once compared Iggy Pop solo albums to episodes of the old Bill Shatner series,
T. J. Hooker. Most of 'em are as unlistenable as episodes of Hooker were unwatchable. Now he has a new rival, the reruns of "Land of the Lost" on the Sci-Fi Channel, set to coincide with the movie remake and a commemorative box set. "Land of the Last" is uniformly dreadful. I dare you to watch more than five minutes of it sober.

So today's Calendar section in the LA Times devotes two of its three frontpage stories to "Land of the Lost" and Iggy Pop's new solo album. Keep in mind, I used to write almost an entire features section at a Tribune property, then Times-Mirror, the Morning Call in Allentown. And while that paper was mediocre and one was confronted with total crap from the entertainment industry on a daily basis, in the early Nineties it wasn't required that you pretend it always be something it wasn't, as is now SOP.

I'll reprint this graf, on Pop and his new album, Preliminaires.

It's hard to imagine a human being writing it with a straight face.

"Rockers who start second careers by singing jazz have become an industry cliche but
Pop, no surprise, doesn't just rework the standard songbook. Using 'The Possibility of an Island,' Michel Houellebecq's 2005 existential sci-fi novel about a dissolute, desolate icon as a springboard, 'Preliminaires' follows the poete maudit traditions of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and the sunny show tunes of Gershwin."

Considering Iggy Pop's 'singing voice,' or facsimile of it, I'd say caveat emptor.

I've heard the record. (I've also read the Houellebecq book, but that's unimportant to this discussion.) Based on your post, I can't tell if you've heard the record or not. It's not terrible, and it is somewhat jazz-influenced (though one song is a conventional rock band arrangement). Iggy can pull off the low-voiced crooner thing when he wants to. It's not something I can really envision myself listening to very often, but neither is Avenue B (his "poetry" album) or Zombie Birdhouse.

Anybody have any thoughts on Mi-Sex? Another Aussie band, early '80s, never charted in the States though their 1980 Gary Numan/Telex-style synth-robot new wave single "Computer Games" (not to be confused with Yellow Magic Orchestra's same-year "Computer Game," though that was easy to do at the time) got plenty of college radio and Sunday-night new wave show play at the time. Which doesn't make the sound very hard rock, I know, except that I was playing the Computer Games LP a few days ago and was surprised to be reminded that lots of it is hard rock -- in tracks like "Not Such A Bad Boy" and "Stills, really eccentric, arch, off-kilter hard rock, like the early Tubes, or how I imagine George's OZ faves Skyhooks (who I've never heard) sound. Thing is, after their quasi-hit, Mi-Sex seem to go in a more new-wave-synth direction in general (with some traces of say early '80s pop-period Rush) on later 1980's (still nonetheless quite catchy) Space Race, and by 1984's Where Do They Go they've clearly sold out (unsuccessfully) to a way more tired, bored, pragmatic commmercial medium-rock sound, like some amalgamation of Robert Palmer, Foreigner, and (maybe inevitably) their countrymen Men At Work, but without hooks good enough to justify it. What I'm most curious about is their earliest Australian stuff -- apparently Computer Games shuffled tracks (including the title track) from a somewhat obversely titled Australian 1979 album called Graffiti Crimes. According to Volume: International Discography Of The New Wave, they were "originally a hippy band known as Fragments Of Time from New Zealand. Moved to Oz 8/78 and became a commerical 'punk' band." Hmmmm...

And speaking of old Aussies, I've also been liking this Aztec Records reissue of Mighty Kong's All I Wanna Do Is Rock, from 1973, by guys from the (aforepraised upthread) Daddy Cool gone heavier boogie. (Typically great Aztec liner note booklet too, including plenty of Daddy Cool's own history.)

Also, while I'm here, catchiest '79-style skinny-tie powerpop album I've heard in many moons comes from Portland, Maine's The Leftovers, who I never heard of before and whose Myspace link is below; guests on Eager To Please include sundry people from the Donnas, Fastbacks, Romantics, and Rubinoos:

http://www.myspace.com/theleftovers

Well, typically, now you've made me more curious about MIghty Kong.

And, from today's dose of antic fun, here.

xp Actually though, subsequent listens to that Leftovers CD suggest to me that "catchiest '79-style skinny-tie powerpop album I've heard in many moons" might be rather faint praise. They've got the melodies and the energy; less convinced they have the voices and riffs -- which aren't bad; just not good enough to've ranked anywhere near the new wave era's best, had they come out then. Not yet sure about their songwriting (which is about girls, duh.)

So, anybody want to convince me that my LP copy of Triumvirat's Spartacus from 1975 shouldn't be transferred into the sell pile? For lack of better signposts I can think of it at the moment, I'd call it a nonrockingly sort of weak-guitared German ELP/early Genesis pastiche concept album about the Roman Empire, with only one third of a track (the highly percussive "Italian Improvisation" midsection of Side Two's nine-minute "The March To The Eternal City") I particularly give a shit about. Am I missing anything? Looks like another track was sampled once by some rap guys (see link below), but I'm not hearing anything all that funky there either:

http://www.the-breaks.com/search.php?term=triumvirat&type=0

Haven't heard Spartacus, but I saw Triumvirat open for Fleetwood Mac in '73. Their set was the entirety of Illusions On A Double Dimple, and they were pretty good at what they did: total ELP clones. I never listen to ELP anymore, so decided I didn't need Triumvirat on my shelf.

So, anybody want to convince me that my LP copy of Triumvirat's Spartacus from 1975 shouldn't be transferred into the sell pile?

No. I had the reissue on CD and it wasn't very good. Long gone now. Double Dimple was their best. A segment of it was actually contained a catchy tune which picked up a good deal of hoity-toity FM radio back when it wasn't too long after ELP had been the biggest band in the US.

Actually, the Rolling Stone Record Guide claims Triumvirat were Finnish, but Joel Whitburn, who I trust more, concurs with my German guess, and adds the singer/guitarist commited suicide in 1977.

So another important question: What were the best/ most rocking City Boy albums? I've only got Book Early from 1978, their last and highest charting of their three that charted in the U.S., and though their only Top 40 single "5.7.0.5" is the charming 10cc soundalike everybody says they were, at least four or five cuts qualify as hard rock in my book - especially on Side Two, where "Do What You Do Well" almost sounds midwestern American in a Head East sense, and the weird late-Beatles/loud-rock mix in "The World Loves A Dancer" and "Moving In Circles" could almost pass for a British version of Crack The Sky. Also very much like "Cigarettes"'s six catchy minutes of hard prog, and the funky powerchorded pop of "Summer In The School Yard," about singing along to the Beatles' yeah-yeah-yeahs in 1964. Are those anomalies, or what? They don't make the Jasper-Oliver book at all, so I wonder.

their debut album is really good! and quirky too. they had a lot of albums. haven't heard them all. i'm selling a copy of the first album in my store if you want it. i could sent it to you.

http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/c/city_boy-same.jpg

actually, chuck, e-mail me your address anyway, i've got all kinds of stuff i can send you for free. good stuff.

i just bought a ton of sealed tapes for my store. i sell a lot of tapes! it's always good to have some backstock. here are some of them:

Agent Steel - Skeptics Apocalypse
Anacrusis - Manic Impressions
Anastasia Screamed - Laughing Down the Limehouse
Angel Witch - Frontal Assault
Arc Angels - Arc Angels
Aversion - Fit to be Tied
B-Thong - Skinned
Band of Susans - Veil
The Beast - Carnival of Souls
Heretic - Breaking Point
Jailhouse - Alive in a Mad World
Mass - Voices in the Night
Mercyless - Abject Offerings
Messano - Messano
Mind Over Four - Half Way Down
Nevada - Beach
Overlord - X Versus the World
Andy Prieboy - Upon My Wicked Son
Prophet - Recycled
Prowler - Prowling Death Squad
Sacred Child - Sacred Child
Shy England - Misspent Youth
Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos Pool Hall
Sister Psychic - Fuel
Skank - I Never Said That
Slapshot - Step on It
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Sweet Pain - Sweet Pain
Sword - Metalized
T T Quick - Metal of Honor
Tesla - Bust a Nut
Tiny Lights - Stop the Sun I Want to Go Home
The Titanics - The Titanics
TMA - Beach Party 2000
The Toll - Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones
Toxik - Think This
T'Pau - The Promise
Tyrant - Too Late to Pray
Victory - Don't Get Mad, Get Even
Violent Playground - Thrashin' Blues
Wreck - House of Boris
YLD - Window Shopping in a Fools Paradise
Zed Yago - Pilgrimage
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....

The Accused - Grinning Like an Undertaker
The Angels - Live From Angel City
Apocrypha - The Forgotten Scroll
Assassin - Interstellar Experience
The Bang Gang - Love Sells.....
Banshee - Cry in the Night
Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll
Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metalicus
Cinderblock - Greatest Hits
Death of Samantha - Come All Ye Faithless
Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn
Diamond Rexx - Golden Gates
Doomwatch - A Symphony of Decadence
Enuff Z'Nuff - Animals With Human Intelligence
Exodus - Pleasures of the Flesh
Jonathan Grell - Winterkat: The Struggle
Heathen - Breaking the Silence
Mekong Delta - The Music of Erich Zann
Numb - Christmeister
John Palumbo - Victim of the Nightlife
Piledriver - Stay Ugly
Raven - Nothing Exceeds Like Excess
Slik Toxik - Doin' The Nasty
Sodom - In the Sign of Evil
The Splatcats - Feelin' Bitchy
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Stone - Stone
Straitjacket Fits - Hail
The Suicide Twins - Silver Missles and Nightengales
Joey Tafolla - Out of the Sun
Tesla - Bust a Nut
Trash Broadway - Trash Broadway
Victims of the Pestilence - Born To Leave
Wartime - Fast Food For Thought
The Weather Prophets - Judges, Juries & Horsemen
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....
The Zeroes - Names, Vol. 1
Zoetrope - Amnesty
Zoetrope - A Life of Crime

Adolescents - Brats in Battalions
Atom Seed - Get in Line (promo)
Aversion - The Ugly Truth
Bad News - Bad News
Belladonna - Belladonna (former Anthrax vocalist!)
Blue Steel - No More Lonely Nights
Candlemass - Live
The Cherry Bomz - 100 Degrees in the Shade
David Coverdale - Whitesnake / Northwinds (double length)
Dancing Hoods - Hallelujah Anyway
Deathrow - Raging Steel
Doctor's Mob - Sophomore Slump
Doughboys - When Up Turns to Down
Drop Acid - Making God Smile
Exodus - Fabulous Disaster
Extreme - III Sides to Eevery Story
Genocide - Black Sanctuary
Gillan - Mr. Universe
The Godz - The Godz
Holy Soldier - Holy Soldier
Hype - Burned
Illusion - I Like It Loud
Impellitteri - Stand in Line
Iron Cross - Iron Cross
John Jarrett's Tribe - John Jarrett's Tribe
Julliet - Julliet
Leviticus - Setting Fire to the Earth
Little Angels - Young Gods (promo)
Lostboys - Lost and Found
Mad Parade - Thousand Words
Manikin Laff - Manikin Laff
Motley Crue - Motley Crue
Noisy Mama - Everybody Has One (promo)
Powermad - Absolute Power
Quiet Riot - Terrified
Raging Slab - Slabbage / True Death
Sky "Sunlight" Saxon - Fire Wall
Seduce - Too Much Ain't Enough
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Too Much Joy - Son of Sam I Am
Victory - That's Live - Tour '88
Wild America - Tora Tora
The Zeroes - Names, Vol. 1

might be some repeats in there. but that oughta give you an idea. and there is more where that came from. i know i'll break down and open a bunch of them out of curiousity.

it's my goal to have the coolest tape department on the eastern seaboard.

>>The Beast - Carnival of Souls

Probably not as good as "The Beast...Has Arrived!" Famous punk rock goon record, done by a guy fond of jumping off the stage onto the head's of others. One song, the first, must have been played a few hundred times at the store where I bought it, burning the line ... "I'll break youyr fucking back!" into my head.

Not quite as good as the first Nihilistics LP.

>>Slapshot - Step on It

F------' Ay! Slapshot! Every album by Slapshot is necessary if you're fond of beating people up!
Don't you need Choke in your bedroom, threatening to hit you in the teeth with his hockey stick?!

>>T T Quick - Metal of Honor

Regular jobbers at the Airport Music Hall in Allentown. I gave this a bad review in the newspaper and they cursed me from the stage.

>>Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn

Rod Evans-era DP!

>>John Palumbo - Victim of the Nightlife

Get back to Crack the Sky or avoid.

>>Stone - Stone

Famous IRS Metal release from the label infamous for doing not-metal. That went well.

>>Blue Steel - No More Lonely Nights

Bad power pop album.

>>Dancing Hoods - Hallelujah Anyway

Something my ex-wife would have liked.

>>Gillan - Mr. Universe

Not bad. Gillan doing his raging hard rock thing.

>>Powermad - Absolute Power

David Lynch directed their video. "I thought he would have a rat on his head," one of the band members told me in interview. That was the most interesting thing about 'em.

>>Raging Slab - Slabbage / True Death

True Death is good, Slabbage not so much.

>>Seduce - Too Much Ain't Enough

Another IRS Metal special, so see Stone. I thought xhuxk once reviewed their self-made debut in his Creem column or in the reviews section of that mag, shortly before it went out of business.

>>Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn

Rod Evans-era DP!

^ any good? i like both gillan and coverdale dp, and captain beyond. i have always lived in total fear of the pre-gillan days.

Spotty. "And the Address" and "Wring That Neck," were two good ones, both Blackmore instrumentals. And "Hush" is a classic, still in DP's repetoire. Don't know if they were all on Taliesyn, off hand. I had the advantage, thirty or forty years ago, of getting it and "Shades of Deep Purple" in an old recompile called Purple Passages, which is worth getting cheap if you can find it in used vinyl. And it should be fairly common.

interesting. i know wring that neck from some of their live stuff. its a jam. literally.

And today's backwards delving, once again on 1994, plus Trigger and Laurie and the Sighs.

Here, in The Thin Line Between Great and Sub-Mediocre.

i like that trigger album too. that's a good one.

i have some 1994 45s, but i've never heard the whole album. the singles never did much for me.

In my mailbox this week: a two-DVD set by Deep Purple including tons of performance footage by all four lineups from '68-'76, and a two-CD Ted Nugent disc supposedly documenting his 6000th live performance. I question the recordkeeping that went into that determination; is he counting all the way back to pre-Amboy Dukes high school bands?

Got the only album by South African stomp-blooze quartet Suck, Time To Suck, in today's mail. Reissued on Shadoks. Features one original and eight covers, as follows: Grand Funk Railroad's "Aimless Lady" and "Sin's A Good Man's Brother," King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," Donovan's "Season Of The Witch," Free's "I'll Be Creeping," Deep Purple's "Into The Fire," Colosseum's "Elegy" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."

Good, now I can buy it. Missed the Leaf Hound reunion disc.

I reinstalled the turntable a couple weeks ago and have been actually using it more than the CD player.

Last night's playlist:

Dave Edmunds Rockpile

Ten Years After Rock 'n' Roll Music to the World Boo! 'Choo Choo Mama had developed a skip.

First side of Humble Pie's Eat It "Good Booze and Bad Women" and "Drugstore Cowboy" were the highlites.

First side of Nugent's Double Live Gonzo: "Just What the Doctor Ordered" (St. Holmes' only vocal on the thing, I think), "Yank Me Crank Me," "Gonzo" and "Baby Please Don't Go."
Boy, Ted's rhythms were faster back then, particularly on the last.

"In my mailbox this week: a two-DVD set by Deep Purple including tons of performance footage by all four lineups from '68-'76"

Very cool

It's not bad. Garagey, crude and angry-primitive. I like it better than the Nugent live thing, though that's got its merits too; nice version of "Wango Tango" and a briefly diverting run through various guitarists' styles and/or trademark riffs (Chuck Berry, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a few others). He's still pretty fast.

I just tried out Ten Years After for the first time this week; downloaded Ssssh. Didn't care for it - too much psychedelic foofery, not enough raw blues-rock madness. Do I need contemporaneous live recordings instead?

get undead, or cricklewood green, or watt, or a space in time, or recorded live, or rock & roll music to the world.

yeah, get recorded live. the double album. that's got some serious jams.

Get Recorded Live and skip right to "I'm Going Home." That's the most crunching high velocity version of it. Plus, there's lots of blooz thud and guitar craziness on the rest of the double.

I suspect you'd also like Undead which is TYA's first live recording, done at a small club, Klooks Kleek, which was part of the British blues boom. It's raw and shows off a lot of jazz noise, something Lee was into but which he downplayed once he became an arena god.

"Boogie On" from Alvin Lee & Co. is also a great thing to hear in this vein.

A Space In Time has TYA's most famous song, "I'd Love to Turn You On" -- but that isn't really a hard rock number, having been mostly used for flavoring as a song in Vietnam-era, or harkening back to Vietnam-era, movies.

Scott and I concur.

i never bought that live at the fillmore set that came out. i'll bet i'd love it though.

did i mention that i love ten years after.

stonedhenge is actually my fave album, but i'm not recommending that one on purpose. cuz that album has a whole different vibe compared to most of their albums.

I have the Fillmore set. It's really almost identical to Recorded Live, only
much longer. You would definitely like it although it's not critical since you have all the other LPs.

Ten Years Later was also a great album, although the original band was gone.

this is what i was loving yesterday:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CeTfgCKjnlo/Rp_oZxCZN_I/AAAAAAAAAcI/nUuMOZII2Hs/s320/Canned_Heat_-_Hallelujah_-_Front.jpg

some seriously cool guitar on that record.

All right, I'll give Recorded Live a listen. Thanks!

you might want to rent that isle of wight festival documentary too. they are awesome in it. and it's just a good movie.

people i would have loved to see at the isle of wight festival directly or indirectly related to this thread:

mighty baby

black widow

the groundhogs

howl

terry reid

taste

family

cactus

ten years after

the doors

the who

free

jethro tull

jimi hendrix

hawkwind

pink fairies

fairfield parlour

procol harum

Man, I lost track of this thread quick. Briefly: I did indeed review (and probably entertainingly overrate) Seduce's self-released debut in Creem Metal in the mid '80s. I got that new double Nuge set in the mail this morning; may not get to it right away. Always liked Ten Years After's Watt, though should probably explore them more sometime, which isn't to say I'll get around to it. Need to pull out my copy of Trigger; not sure if I've unpacked all my "T" LPs yet or not (half of vinyl collection still in boxes beneath the stairs until I buy shelves -- top of the master bedroom closet now full.) Like the second 1994 LP more than George does, but right, not nearly as much as their first one. Have never actually heard Laurie and the Sighs, though I'll now be on the lookout for it.

Played DC3's 1985 This Is The Dream this morning -- first album by Dez Cadena-guitared-and-vocaled not-as-powerful-as-I-wish SST label power trio who say in the liner notes they want to make an album like their favorites by Deep Purple, Captain Beyond, Humble Pie, and Mountain. They don't pull it off -- singing and guitaring is too thin (though the title track and "98 Malvern St" do okay in the latter department), songs seem too hippie-sloppy and marijuanified and not-quite-finished, Spot production murk probably doesn't help -- but for punk rockers remembering the '70s sludge they grew up on so early in the game, it strikes me as a valid attempt. Remember liking their later The Good Hex more at the time (#314 in Stairway), but I don't have a copy of that anymore. Weird to think the first DC3 album is now 24 years old, though -- We're as close to it now as it was to 1961, wow.

Liking a couple new stoner-doom-type albums okay this week, too, for the first time in some time -- the ones by Snail and Black Pyramid on Meteor City (also liked the one by Elder on that label late last year) and the (more Answer-type '70s mainstream rock revival I guess) one by Grand Union on Rise Above. None of them are great; can't promise I'll still be listening to any of them even a couple weeks from now. But for now, they're sounding not bad. (The other three or so albums I got from Meteor City last week didn't quite cut it for me, though.)

ps) Oh yeah, I need to look over Scott's tape list above sometime. As for the first City Boy LP, I'll pass for now, Scott; on a budget. But if I ever see it somewhere for $2 or less, I may snatch it up.

Albums on Scott's tape list that I actually own (on CD):

Anacrusis - Manic Impressions
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....

May or may not own that live Angel City album on vinyl. (+ some Sabbath and Godz ones, duh.)

Been curious about Mekong Delta ever since Popoff compared them to Voivod in his book. And I didn't like that latter-day Death of Samantha album when it came out, though maybe I would if I heard it now.

Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos Pool Hall

This is the late '80s band (who I know absolutely nothing out), not the Billy Squier powerpop one from the '70s, right? Awesome album title, either way.

Taste and Cactus were at Isle of Wight? Cool, Jim McCarty and Rory Gallagher on the same stage. Two underappreciated guitar geniuses.

Today is Wishbone Ash day at my record store. I've already played their debut three times in a row today. ESSENTIAL ALBUM FOR ANYONE READING THIS THREAD. i mean, you all knew that, but just in case there are lurkers.

Dragged out the TYA Fillmore East set over the weekend. It is as I remembered, much like "Recorded Live" but longer. Not essential unless you're really really nuts for TYA. But if one can't find RL, then it's a more than adequate demonstration and substitute, at a somewhat more intimate venue -- although not by much -- than the ones where the former where recorded in Europe.

And not related to this thread, but in case you'd like to hear what I sound like these days, from a radio show.