Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

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.

what do y'all think of Argent? I've been digging their S/T, Ring of Hands and In Deep albums. heavier than I remembered, w/swirling keyboards and celestial harmonies.

Russ Ballard was hard to beat as a songwriter. Between the hard pop rock with hooks he wrote and the more progressive material Rod Argent liked, they covered quite a bit of ground. The Ballard material is what everyone remembers, "Hold Your Head Up," "God Gave Rock 'n' Roll to You," "Liar" which became a hit for 3 Dog Night, "It's Only Money." They even redid "Time of the Season." Even heavy longer stuff like "I Am the Dance of Ages" sounded good.

If you don't mind having your old-school hard-glam energy crossed with modern production and some goth lasciviousness, check out the new HIM album, Screamworks. It's not Humble Pie or anything (it's not humble anything), but if you're the kind of person who notices Ratt on a new-release list, HIM might be worth at least a couple :30 samples. Start with track 1...

Not bad.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/dakota-fanning-featuring-kristen-stewart/490989/cherry-bomb.jhtml

wait, i can't remember, did you go see the runaways movie, gorge?

i don't think i need to see it. i'll bet its not as good as light of day. joan jett should have won an oscar for that movie.

listening to george brigman all day. i can just listen to his records over and over in the store and i'm fine.

No, not yet. Hasn't opened nationwide. March 19, maybe in Pasadena. Going to go in the afternoon to see what the pensioners make of it.

So have we ever discussed Y & T here? I actually don't think I've ever heard their late '70s albums as Yesterday & Today, though everything I've ever read about them suggests I'd like them a lot -- thinking of them as somewhere in the neighborhood of late '70s Riot (which I've grown to think was amazing), maybe? Anyway, I got Y & T's In Rock We Trust from '84 for $1, and turns out I like it more than Martin Popoff (who gives it a 4 and basically calls it a scattershot AOR sellout, which is probably true) does. Apparently the semi-hit (which Popoff likes) was "Don't Stop Runnin'," but I hear three tracks more even brutal or anthemic or just plain entertaining than that: The title track, which is just a hilariously over-the-top Spinal Tap retard-metal power protest that's too dorky to resist ("Kings and queens and presidents are tryin' to take the world in hand/Jokers and freaks and Arab shieks are fightin' over chunks of sand...Tin soldiers march around the world no matter what the people say/One man makes the policy while the rest of us get blown away!); "Master and Slaves," likewise OTT in sound and with backup vocals answering "Master!" that I swear may have inspired "Master Of Puppets" from Metallica (who as I recall were fans); and "Lipstick and Leather," more S&M rock (a topic these guys seem obsessed with) but dancier, sounding like a heavier version of '80s Robert Palmer, which is to say pretty much exactly like the Electric Six sound nowadays. Otherwise, yeah, there are ballads and AOR schlock, but not much more than on say the Scorpions' Blackout (a Popoff 10) as far I can tell, plus Dave Meniketti sings more or less like Sammy Hagar and I don't mind it. Still don't doubt their earlier albums were a lot more rocking, and maybe if I'd heard all that stuff first I'd be pissed off by the dumb hackwork here too, but I didn't.

Deborah Frost, in Rolling Stone Review 1985, didn't like it either, fwiw: "Rarely have suggestions of Grand Funk Railroad (the lead vocals), est (lyrics), and It's a Beautiful Day (meandering solos) been combined so painfully." But she also calls the tempos funereal, which is just wrong; they're not exactly thrashing, but give or take the ballads they're not slow, either. So I don't think she listened close.

Jasper and Oliver btw say Yesterday and Today started out as a Top 40 cover band, which makes me curious about whether there are any tapes or bootlegs of evolving metal bands covering '70s Top 40 hits back then -- might be cool. Like, I'd love to hear Van Halen covering KC and the Sunshine Band, which they supposedly used to do before their debut.

Actually, what I called "the title track" is the lead track, called "Rock & Roll's Gonna Save The World." (And it does!)

so i was reading in gene simmons' autobio that HE was the first person to get van halen into a studio? brought them to new york to record and all that. i never knew that. cyrus - who is four - collects kiss books so i've been learning all kinds of fun facts. you know, his autobio isn't half as smarmy as you would think.

i never thought i would ever listen to this much kiss in my life. cuzza cyrus. i pretty much never listened to kiss until this year and last year.