Rolling Hard Rock 2008 Thread

I have a self-titled Thunder album from 1980 that Wounded Bird reissued, I remember correctly they play mildly interesting roadhouse rock. Had no idea they were still together/reunited.

That was weird spacing... also, it should be IF I remember correctly. I mean, I could probably throw the CD on, but I'm lazy.

That must be a different Thunder, these guys are ex Terraplane who were around in the late 80s. God why do I remember this stuff?

Alice Cooper - Along Came A Spider

I completely missed this, is it worthwhile in any way whatsoever?

I couldn't even make it through the thing. (And I'd actually liked 2005's Dirty Diamonds OK. Think we talked about this somewhere upthread, actually.)

The Thunder I know had a US debut -- were more well known in Britain as regular openers for the mighty Quo, I think -- at the end of the Eighties/early Nineties. Made some noise due to a single and video for "Dirty Love" -- which is a funny, amusing and very catchy song. The video had the drummer, a short bald guy in a ballerina's outfit and dirty sneakers. I recall it being on MTV a lot. The rest of the album was only fair by comparison. Second album and they were about through here although they had more in the UK.

I've a best of collection. It's OK, was very cheap used and contains "Dirty Love" which is the entire reason for owning or investigation. Most of what they did was standard hair metal, boogie and ballads.

Gave 'em a review in the newspaper which essentially said you'll probably hate most of the album but damned if the single won't keep you coming back to it.

Helix had a new album? I'm amazed I didn't know that. Good, I take it?

Yep. Wrote about it here:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/05/hair-metal-pion.html

I think George wrote about it on his blog earlier than me, too.

And Thanksgiving weekend in Michigan (true story), I convinced my younger sister to go out to her garage and find her legendary cassette copy of Walking The Razor's Edge and donate it to my collection. She said she'd bought it for the "great ballad", which must have been a hit in Detroit, or at least Windsor, at the time. She also got excited when she saw an old Giuffria cassette (self-titled) of hers out there. (She'd bought that for a ballad at the time, too.) The two boxes of cassettes in the house were pretty much all John Cougar and Bryan Adams ones (hers, like I say in that Helix review) and Pat Benatar ones (her husband's), except for the Firm and a couple other things.

George beat me to the Helix album by four months:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2008/02/sludge-in-70s-recent-cost-effectives-us.html

Haha, yeah, Helix's ballad (cover of "Make Me Do Anything You Want") was quite the crossover hit in Canada.

I should track that new album down, good to see it was well-received. They were just in my city playing some tiny dive, flogging a Christmas album or something, and I sort of wanted to go, but didn't. I saw them a couple of times in the mid-80s when they were selling out 3000 seat theatres in Canada.

Bleh, I remember Giuffria..."Call to the Heart", that was the big song of theirs.

Demonstration of the Korg Pandora by me. Basically, much of the technology is devoted to putting a classic rock band in a box the size of a cigarette pack.