Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

Hey, for xhuxk, check the 'songs about prostitution' thread for the youtube steal of Armand Schaubroek's "Ratfucker." Did the Tubes' Young and Rich just drip that or vice versa or not? Rhetorical question, obviously.

I can definitely hear a connection. That and the Kevin Coyne song that George sent me a youtube link to today, "Good Boy," both have lots of crazy musical force to them, vocal and otherwise. Both mainly....rants, I guess. Have never actually heard Shaubroeck (Steals) before, I don't think, though I've been hearing about him forever. How good was he?

Lots of Coyne here, if anybody's interested:

http://kevincoyne.blogspot.com/

Also, I actually do like "Roxy Roller" -- though maybe more so in the Sweeney Todd version, featuring Bryan "Guy" Adams. (Actually like Nick Gilder in general, and appreciate the contribution he made in keeping glam rock alive in Vancouver in the mid to late '70s when it apparently had died most everywhere else, thus paving the way for Streetheart.)

Pulled out Fanny's Fanny Hill from 1972, and it definitely had more organic boogie dirt beneath its nails than that later post-touring-band album I talked about a bunch of posts above. But I'm not sure that makes me like it more, to be honest. Their version of "Hey Bulldog" fucking kills kills kills, and the the first couple songs on Side One ("Ain't That Peculiar" cover and "Knock On My Door") have some okay thump to them, and "Rock Bottom Blues" is a decent midway point between pop boogie and pop glam even if its opening does remind me too much of "Your Mama Don't Dance" by Loggins & Messina (same year.) But lots of the rest just sounds too frigging hippified for my taste -- you can really hear the lesbian-folk boat about to roll ashore in June Millington's ballads. She even has one called "Think About The Children," for God's sake, and she's not joking! Guess the gospel backup and bullfight bolero horns in the closer "The First Time" should be interesting on paper, but I could live without them, too. So I dunno.

Occurred to me that the first Home Blitz album from a couple years back and Cheap Trick's Latest album from last year have something in common in that, in both cases, the best track was a lesser-known Slade cover: "My Town" and "When The Lights Are Out," respectively. (I wound up liking the Home Blitz set more myself, but I get why some wouldn't.)

Got an archival CD by a St. Louis band called Raymilland in the mail today: Recordings '79-'81. Theoretically "post-punk", and definitely sounds like brainy kids playing with their chemistry kits a lot (think I stole that from Frank), but who its melodies and singing keep bringing to mind for me is actually the Bizarros, for some reason.

Alex Jones's Wiki page lists KRS-One and Willie Nelson as also having appeared on his show; I definitely heard Dave Mustaine on there a month or two ago too. My car dial always seem to land on the show on Saturday afternoons, for some reason. Jones is based here; not clear to me whether he's as big a radio presence anywhere else -- but in general, I get the idea Austin counts as some kind of conspiracy-theory capital. The mood here just feels conducive to that kind of thinking, somehow. Lotsa Ron Paul stickers around, still. Theoretically outlaw city that's been home to aging hippies with fried brainpains for decades ("keep Austin weird") in an archetypally right-libertarian cowboy state that wants to indoctrinate Christianity and creationism in school history and science classes, so no big surprise. Neither was Joe Stack, maybe.

Some maniac posted almost an entire 12/23/72 Grand Funk Railroad concert on YouTube. Enjoy! http://bit.ly/g_f_r

got the moses cd reissue on shadoks and i'm really digging it. very cool danish power trio. only made one album. love the arrangements and production. some cream, some sabbath, you know the drill. but definitely worth a spin or five. phil, you would dig it. i think.

http://psychedelic-music.com/GIF/Moses.gif

(one of those albums i'd always heard about but never got around to hearing till now.)

mentioned the "official" reissues of amazing african psych records by witch and amanaz on the reissues thread, but i feel like i should mention them again since i can't stop playing them. the witch album *lazy bones!!* definitely belongs here. hard and heavy zambian psych/hard rock.

http://www.exiledrecords.com/shop/images/witchlazybones.jpg

I got those African albums - Witch and Amanaz - in the mail this weekend, and really didn't like them as much as I'd hoped to. Nigerian rock bands (BLO, Moussa Doumbia and Ofo the Black Company in particular) just stomp all over 'em. More fuzz, wilder rhythms, over-the-top vocals...the Nigerians had everyone beat in the '70s. I think I had that Moses disc at one point, too, but it kinda slid under a pile of other stuff.

i think the amanaz is sublime. and a wonderful psych album. as far as witch goes, let's just say that i'm pretty easy to please as far as 70's hard rock goes and its got some cool moments.

Count me among those who think there is a ruling elite of some sort and that it's worth investigating the visible organs of power (e.g., the CFR), that it's not ridiculous to talk about the risk of the U.S. becoming a police state given the extent to which our rights have been trampled on in recent years (continuing into the current administration), that the revolving door between Wall Street and the Federal Reserve is more than a little troubling, etc., etc. The people I relate to the least are the ones who feel not outrage about anything and seem incapable of imagining how fucked we actually are.

(But no, not a fan of Alex Jones.)

I guess this is just crazy conspiracy theory too.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

And I guess it reflect poorly on me that I wonder why the corporate media has almost completely left this story untouched.

She started her own website, incidentally:

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/

But lots of the rest just sounds too frigging hippified for my taste -- you can really hear the lesbian-folk boat about to roll ashore in June Millington's ballads.

You need to dig out Mother's Pride too. You should see all the pics in the Rhino Handmade box. They really did drip that rock hippie house off Sunset vibe where Lowell George would come to teach 'em to play slide and everyone would hang vibe. My only gripe is they could've been encouraged to inject more venom at a time when the guys were certainly doing it.

Don't have any Mother's Pride; decided instead to go full-on early '70s pre-fab in order to clear all that hippie fiber from my guts: The Wild Thing album by Fancy (who I used to get confused with Fanny oddly enough -- and yeah Scott, I've always mixed up Ayers and Coyne too), on Big Tree Records (also home of Brownsville Station for some years there), from 1974. Title-track Troggs cover was a #14 hit; followup single "Touch Me" where the girl in the band tries to sound al sexy, went #14. Don't think I've ever heard either of those songs on the radio. Apparently they were British, and maybe it's possible they actually played live sometimes, but they sound like such a disco-forecasting studio concoction they make the band on the first Ram Jam album seem like, uh, the Grateful Dead. Liner notes: "Wild Thing, an old song, a new version, a chart record. Fancy, a New Band, great guys, fantastic chick. Don't listen to this ecord alone, it takes two to...Tango?" Four good-looking people probably in their twenties on the cover, two trying to look tough in their leather jackets, one who looks more a junior professor type, and a blonde squeezed into cut off jean shorts. All conceivably on cocaine, or hoping to look like they are.

Lots of cowbells and congas all over, but also chunky bubblegum hard rock riffs -- really, given this was England, maybe not far from Chinn and Chapman's early works for the Sweet (or maybe even Chicory Tip or somebody more mysteriously Brit like that), though here the producer and principal songwriter turns out to be some guy named Mike Hurst (who Wiki explains had earlier produced Brit hits for the Move and Manfred Mann, and later managed Shakin' Stevens and discovered Samantha Fox.)

Catchiest non-singles are probably Fancy's clueless bid for mid-American high school parking lots sock-hop nostalgia number "Move On," extremely Diddleyfied "Between The Devil And Me," and percussive closer "Feel Good," none of which one recalls much else about once they end. Okay, just found this on last.fm: "Fancy is a British white funk band of the 1970’s most famous for their cover of the Trogg’s 'Wild Thing,' a single which went gold in the U.S. Former Penthouse pet Helen Court sang steamily, Rick Fenwick ex-of the Spencer Davis Group played guitar, Mo Foster bass, Henry Spinetti drums and Alan Hawkshaw keyboards. Fancy released several subsequent albums replacing Court with Annie Cavanaugh from the cast of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, but failed to regain the same success." So there you go.

Finally, fwiw, I definitely think there is some middle ground between believing that all is for the best in the best of all possible words and thinking Boxcar Willie was a lizard person. But that's just me.

Actually "Touch Me" went #19, oops. (And then in 1986, Samantha Fox had her first hit, also named "Touch Me," which went #4. Coincidence?)

Also meant "Don't listen to this record...," obv. (And didn't mean to imply Chapman/Chinn produced Chicory Tip; that came out wrong. Also don't think Fancy get anywhere near as catchy as the Sweet.)

i love the fancy wild thing cover. i have the 45. i need the album. or i want to hear it at least. i'll find one out there.

(Also, duh -- Mother's Pride is a Fanny album, not a band! Don't think I've ever actually heard that one, but I'll keep an eye out.)

i always want to like fanny records more than i do. i've tried over the years. i think i've heard them all. there is a great comp to be made of their strongest songs. but for the length of an album...usually i get kinda bored. even the glam makeover doesn't do too much for me. i'll take that debut by Isis for rockin' 70's ladies.

Coyne videos linked here so they don't clog, along with excerpt from the thread. See 'blogroll meta' in sidebar for attrib.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/03/01/brit-idiosyncracy-always-waives-the-rules/

Uh, well it displays on the main page.

Listening to a disc today that I highly recommend to Scott and George and recommend Chuck totally ignore: Walk the Nile, by Elephant9. They're an instrumental organ-bass-drums trio on Rune Grammofon; this is their second album. Ultra thick prog-rock grooves, like what might have happened if Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan had fallen off the stage during a Deep Purple show in '72 and the other three had to vamp for an hour. The drummer is from Shining, whose latest album Blackjazz combines free skronk, death metal and industrial into a huge howling roar (and closes with a massively ear-destroying version of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man") and the keyboardist is from Supersilent, but don't let that fool you - he's in full Lord/Emerson territory here, and the bassist (who's from a group I've never heard called National Bank) is working a groove somewhere right between Chris Squire of Yes and John Lodge from the Moody Blues. This is a really heavy album that kinda blindsided me with its awesomeness; made to be played loud, for sure.

i was actually gonna recommend that elephant9 album to YOU, phil, a week or two ago. but i forgot to. i love it. been playing it a lot.

recommend Chuck totally ignore

Uh, doesn't sound like something I'd hate, Phil! I might even like it. (Fwiw, a weirdo prog album on Rune Grammofon, Jono El Grande's Neo Dada, made my Pazz & Jop last year. And "massively ear-destroying version of King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man'" sounds like it could be a real cool thing; ditto extended Jon Lord-style organ vamping. So, not like I'm averse to that kind of stuff -- though if you're guessing I might prefer it with a singer, you could be right.)

I was totally into Lee Michaels Live, which -- between the singing parts, had huge amounts of B3 and drum vamps. So yeah, this sounds like a hit.

the elephant9 album has such a cool sound to it. it's refreshing in a way. that combination of instruments sounds really good to me at the moment. i've been slogging my way thru 9 or 10 brian auger albums trying to sift out the wheat from the chaff and to hear a new group that just cuts to the chase and gets to the good parts right away is a relief!

there is live elephant9 footage on youtube but its more stretched out and noodly stuff then the album. the album has good concise punchy tracks on it.

So has Giorgio (Moroder)'s goofball protest against policemen, "Watch Your Step," from his 1972 LP Son Of My Father showed up on any of those velvet goldmining glam-rock nuggets reissue CDs that've come out in recent years? I haven't heard any of those, but it should. What a rocking song -- really, maybe more legit '60s garage punk than '70s glam as far as its sound goes. (Rest of the album has parts that could maybe pass for Mud or Gary Glitter, but not super rocking ones. Still a real good prehistoric synth-pop record though. Title track went #46 in the States; Moog beauty "Tears" wound up getting sampled on DJ Shadow's Endtroducing; "Lord Release Me" could be a Boney M prototype.)

Also played Barrabas's RCA 1973 Power, easily one of the very funkiest rock LPs of the early '70s, today. Scott's a big fan, too --sextet from Spain, maybe trying to be Santana but totally out-grooving them. Killer cuts: "Mr. Money," "Casanova," "Children," "Boogie Rock." Heart Of The City from '75, which charted #149 in the States, is good too, but this one's better. Have never heard their '71 debut Wild Safari. They got played a bit in very early discos, apparently.

and that's LITERALLY 9 or 10 brian auger albums. believe you me, they are not all created equal.

i've really been enjoying the Mark-Almond Band lately. i like all the stuff with dannie richmond.

and IF! been playing a lot of IF. they had some great heavy moments for a proggy horn band.

every Barrabas album has gems on it.

chuck, you HAVE to hear the sandy nelson disco cover of in-a-gadda-da-vida i was listening to today. so awesome!

I'll try! But is it better than the Disco Circus or 16 Bit versions?

By the way, speaking of prehistoric organ-metal and disco-rock, anybody ever heard a whole album by this band Titanic, who did "Sultana" (from 1972's Sea Wolf) that supposedly was a big hit across Europe and got worked into DJ sets between soul classics in very early (like 1971) New York gay discos? Jasper and Oliver call them "heavy Uriah Heep-style thrash rock" and say they came from "UK/France/Norway". (They also say they went downhill after their third album in 1973.) I don't think I've ever seen an album by them, but maybe I will someday.

"and that's LITERALLY 9 or 10 brian auger albums. believe you me, they are not all created equal."

The two CD Live Oblivion is the one to hear. The live versions smoke most of the studio takes. I do think Auger had a nice mix, even though it is jazzy rock, it really is more reminicent to a rockish take on a modal or cool jazz group than fusion. The studio albums are a bit more spotty, but they seemed to be one of those groups that never really had a steady singer and the guy that is on the live records is also on Closer to It (I'm pretty sure), which I think is one of the better ones.

I get into times though I really like to listen to rock bands or jazz groups that use a bunch of Hammond organ. That is a sound that just isn't around much now and if it is, it's not the same.

The record I came across via emusic that kind of fits this thread that really blew my mind was getting Johnny Guitar Watson's "What the Hell Is This?" A title very fitting, no doubt...criminy that thing is one crazy mix of stuff. "I don't want no one to taste my cognac before I can have a drink..." This stuff is from some pocket universe. It's like chocolate, peanut butter and grape jelly melted down into a tasty goo.

Zappa was a major fan of Watson. So was Steve Miller.

I had heard some of his blues stuff and knew JGW did funk in the 70s, but this record is quite cool. It definitely holds up well with some p-funk or bootsie.

really turned off to Shooter now. dang

Reflects a lot of his audience and upbringing, I suppose. Although he spent a lot of time in an unsuccessful LA glam band.

Article on Daniel Davies and his band, Year Long Disaster, in today's LA Times. In an inauspicious start, it devotes a good third of its length to the lede which is on how Daniel Davies is a remarkable van driver, able to get across the country in three days.

No idea what the music sounds like from the piece except it's loud hard rock, nothing like Dave Davies' guitar playing and the impression that Davies and his son don't like each other too much, now living on opposite sides of the world. New album threatened on Monday. Anyone heard it?

It was an interesting read, something someone spent time on, as opposed to Tuscaloosa Ann's bit on Jimi Hendrix on Saturday. What would Jimi have thought of hip hop? Would he "have had a hand in inventing
it?" If you ever wondered about the evidence for a deity, then Tuscaloosa Ann on Jimi Hendrix is good evidence of god playing a little bit of a practical joke.

speaking of canada, picked up hammersmith's second album tonight for the princely sum of two dollars. 1976. i dig it. some proggy flourishes and a six minute song called "under the sea", but mostly just short sweet hard rock songs and some pop rock stuff a la styx. two guitarists. they never really stretch out and jam for long, but the sound they make is satisfying.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xQ-zn51BoTk/ReEXXk2q14I/AAAAAAAAADM/vywWtJJ0gBQ/s320/cover.jpg

Heard the 75 debut last year, liked it. The usual good slice of meat and potatoes Canadian hard rock.
Here's what I thought at the time.

Way better odds is Hammersmith's debut from '75. Canadian undercard party rock band. "Late Loving Man" is BTO cowbell rock, "Money Rock" same funky and tongue-in-cheek style as Joe Walsh would be doing on Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet -- a really good song, maybe the best on the album.

"Nobody Really Knows Why the Sun Goes" -- Eagles Hotel California melancholia. In fact, on the chorus it sounds exactly like the Eagles, with heavier guitars.

Lots of funky hard rock on this, second hight point probably "Funky as She Goes," the
penultimate number. Again, this one is very Joe Walsh solo inflected, ripping off the riff "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" in the song's intro.

speaking of canada, listening to the 1978 debut by Aerial. Aerial was apparently a Beatles tribute band called Liverpool before they changed their name. so you can imagine what their album sounds like. very Beatles-y. i like it. they weren't a one-note power pop band though. lots of guitars, lots of synths and even mellotron and a song entitled "Indispensable Thomas Hensible" that i really like a lot.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s19172.jpg

so, you know, if you are a klaatu fan, you would dig the aerial album.

just to prove that i can be mean and nasty on the internet i gotta warn men women and children away from the horrible new "space rock" album i got in the mail yesterday by someone calling himself "the flowers of hell". one guy and about a ZILLION other people playing everything except a jews harp and the spoons making the most tedious go nowhere sub-Spiritualized "orchestral" racket that i've heard in a long time. this is supposed to be "ambitious". or something. it actually makes the deadly boring Japanese crescendo-rock band Mono - who i can't stand - sound lively by comparison. yuck.

i had to play THREE humble pie records in a row just to get the taste of that cd out of my mouth.

Ted Nugent argues that his riding of a buffalo during shows is somehow different than
riding killer whales at SeaWorld for entertainment. Besides, he argues, he always carries a weapon onstage and can kill the buffalo with a quick shot to the head if it gets out of line. Remarkable if only for twice using the word 'snot' in the essay. Once was not enough?

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/08/i-love-animals-theyre-delicious//print/

I really wish the GOP would stop dicking around and work on Nugent as a potential next presidential candidate. How is he not better than Haley Barbour?

And, just for fun, I got mentioned in the WaTimes the same day.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/09/army-goes-mad-plots-ways-to-fight-fantastic-future//print/

Walk Through Fire, the new album by '80s UK metal act Raven, contains a not-bad (except for the awful vocals, vastly inferior to Sammy Hagar's) cover of Montrose's "Space Station #5." Also, Raven's current drummer is Joe Hasselvander, formerly of Pentagram.

Hey George, I actually listened to that Year Long Disaster album last week; like the earlier stuff I heard by them (their debut EP from 2005 anyway -- don't think I ever heard the previous full-length), I thought it was pretty good, but not distinctive enough to expect I'll ever put it on again. Anyway, here's the Rhapsody review I wrote of the new one:

http://www.rhapsody.com/year-long-disaster/black-magic-all-mysteries-revealed#albumreview

Looks like the new album also has "Show Me Your Teeth" on it, making it four years between muster.

I have an old Raven album on vinyl with Joe Hasselvander on drums. Guess he left and came back
years later. It's good you can always call up your old buds to help, I think.

Been mulling over Streetwalkers' Vicious But Fair ... Plus, a 'best of' sort of on See For
Miles from a year or so ago, maybe more.

I've never previously been able to sustain any interest in Streetwalkers for one LP, as proven when xhuxk brought 'em up last year.

Here's xhuxk:

Anybody (esp George) have any thoughts on either Streetwalkers or the Steve Gibbons Band -- stodgy blues-rock groups with smart reps from pre-punk mid '70s England, led by gruff tough guys said to be at least mildly eccentric? Neither band put a single album in the Billboard 200. Critics in general at the time seem to have found them both passable, for what that's worth (not much I know), but I never gave them much thought til I bought both their debut LPS for $1 each a few weeks back.

Streetwalkers' 1975 self-titled LP really isn't sinking in. Some decent guitar parts ("Crawfish" vaguely reminds me of "Green Eyed Lady" or "Black Magic Woman"), and I like the funky talk box in the opening "Downtown Flyers," but if Roger Chapman had a personality beyond being just another post-Cocker coot, I'm not hearing it. Maybe it kicked in on later albums. Here, the songs just don't seem
memorable

Me:

There's a lot of Streetwalkers floating around in the usual rip off joints, too, not that it matters. (Vicious But Fair and Red Card) Some of it even streamed, reminding me it was everything I thought it wasn't.

=====

Re Streetwalkers: If you liked Family, you might like them. For me Family was an often iffy
proposition. Hey, early Euro-art, mostly rock format, dramatic but almost no roll.

Streetwalksrs were supposed to be even more rock. What they were was louder. I had Red Card which was the one which have the most obvious interest for people on this thread. Couldn't write songs, definitely not at all like Aerosmith, almost no groove. Loud and oblique with Roger Chapman. Sometimes painful and easy to ignore or immediately take off, unintentionally so.

Vicious But Fair ... Plus is VBC plus half of Red Card[i] and half of [i]Downtown Flyers, which was the debut, I think.

Nicko McBain drums on about half of it.

VBC is the most ignorable. It has one good bar room rock/hard rock spurt that doesn't make me work at remembering it, "Can't Come In." Qualifies as heavy pub rock, something Count Bishops fans would have liked.

But the rest of the album isn't that good. Honestly, some of it reminds me of the first couple albums Genesis made with Phil Collins more directly aping Peter Gabriel.

"Gypsy Moon" is good, singer/songwriter/Doobie Bros 'oh, black water'-type stuff. Not hard rock, something you'd find the style of on all the Black Crowes records you didn't pay attention to but which probably had one or two good tunes on. It's one of the pieces from Downtown Flyers.

The title cut is funky hard rock with voice box and vocoder and it defines a repeating thread in Streetwalkers albums, the desire to be funky with black women singers, sort of like Humble Pie's Blackberries, adding color while Roger Chapman tries to hold up the other end. He almost can but it's still English and if you liked PFunk or Mothers Finest, US bands, this would probably not do much to ya.

"Crawfish" is one of the better hard rockers, seems to take about half of Chicago Transit Authority's
"I'm a Man"

Half of Red Card is here, allegedly the most artistic and best hard rock, sometimes early metal, type thing. Only two songs from four are worth coming back to, "Crazy Charade" and "Shotgun Messiah."
"Decadence Code" sounds like the early Phil Collins/Genesis mix and a cover of "Dady Rolling Stone" is something you might have found years later on a Black Crowes album if the BCs were Britishes.

What's that hit, somewhere between 25 and 33 percent? I can remember more of it now that I've listened to it over and over a few times.

Roger Chapman, eccentric immediately gripping voice, as a singer he never lets up. Charlie Whitney, great tasty guitar player, lays back a little more than maybe the record's needed. Nicko McBain on drums, doing work less distinguished than when he was drumming for Pat Travers and Rory Gallagher briefly. Bobby Tench, who was the Seventies version of Lenny Kravitz -- everyone thought he was destined for stardom when he fronted the Jeff Beck group but you couldn't have a Lenny Kravitz back then so .... adds a little soul here and there, content mainly playing guitar.

Given the names and the regard with which the individuals were held, an underachiever with moments.

really digging Diamond Reo's debut last night.

...Not to be confused with the '90s pop-country band Diamond Rio (who I've always assumed were pretty lame), right? Except by me, until right this second. (I don't think I've ever heard an album by either of them.)

you would LOVE the first diamond reo album, chuck. great stuff. recorded in pittsburgh.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s370130.jpg

I had both of those. Always thought the first was better than the second which was way harder but suffered a bit for it. Norman Nardini band.