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All That Festers, Is Not Mould

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Welcome to 1971 folks!

Kadavar Abra Kadavar 01Kadavar Abra Kadavar 03

Look at the dudes on the cover.  With their far-out lady fabrics and their strung-out 1000 yard stares Kadavar look like the elders of a particularly disreputable pan-European love cult, sizing up potential recruits.  Flip the gatefold open and we’re presented with a garlanded, feathered skull fetish, it’s a great photograph in the style of a 18th century still life.  Then, excuse me this is where my palms get a little sweaty, check out the buttery yellow vinyl.  Add in the fact that the LP, Abra Kadavar, has one of the best titles I’d heard in a while and you can see why I leaped on it.

Okay, needle in the groove … that’s when my problems start.  Take a look at this note on the sleeve:

Kadavar Abra Kadavar 05

I like the cojones, this is a band who can clearly really cut it live and don’t mind you peering through to the bare bones within.  However in practice on record, what this means for this three-piece is that the sound is often far too thin and wavery, particularly the vocals – making something that really sounds like it could, with the proper production, move mountains, sound like something straining to move its bowels at times.

Kadavar Abra Kadavar 04

Kadavar’s sound is very much a German amalgam of all those hoary old progressive doom stoners like Pentagram, Black Sabbath and Leafhound*.  There’s nothing at all wrong with that, it’s just that on Abra Kadavar they don’t bring enough of their own personality to the show.  I own plenty of LPs that I enjoy that wouldn’t score very highly on the Originalideaometer**, but if that is going to be the case you need to bring something and Kadavar, for all their great 60s and 70’s stylings, don’t on this album.

Kadavar Abra Kadavar 06Kadavar Abra Kadavar 02 (2)

The best track on Abra Kadavar is ‘Doomsday Machine’, where the band speed it up and heavy it out more so than any other song here.  It’s good, very good in fact:

I do like the way that the rhythm section have that Sabbath lightness of foot about them, rather than just an all-out pummeling that so many metallers adopted.  What makes Abra Kadavar a frustrating album for me is that there are a few tracks here that sound like they could be excellent, if better produced like ‘Black Snake’ and ‘Come Back Life’, as Spotify is messing me around at the moment*^ have a look at the quite groovy video to the latter – they get bonus points for having a ‘God Bless Johnny Cash’ bumper sticker:

I had hoped that one day I would plonk Abra Kadavar on the turntable and I’d suddenly just get it, but I haven’t and I don’t think I will now.  Maybe it’s a limitation of imagination and/or subtlety on my part but this really could have done with being heavied up.  It really is a shame but I need to think, groovy object or not, how much I really want to keep hold of this one.  Is one track on a lovely looking LP enough to make it a keeper?^ Hmm.

Kadavar Abra Kadavar 07 (2)

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PS: The usual 1537 caveat applies – this is a far better LP than any I’ve ever made.  They did it, I haven’t yet; they win.

*if you don’t know ‘Freelance Fiend’ from their Growers Of Mushroom LP then I don’t want to be your friend anymore!

**that’s a real thing, I have one in my garage.

*^have they joined forces with Google? who are still strangling my site, by the way.

^Damn, where’s Aaron when you need him?


Filed under: Culture, Doom, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Kadavar, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: Abra Kadavar, Black Sabbath, Come Back Life, Doom, Doomsday Machine, German Metal, Kadavar, Nuclear Blast Records, Yellow vinyl

Uncle Sam: Heaven or Hollywood (Reissue)

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So, where to start?  Okay, meet my new friend, the gorgeously packaged 2015 reissue of Uncle Sam Heaven Or Hollywood CD.

Uncle Sam Heaven Hollywood 01

It’s lovely*, the sound is great, there are lots of neat new pictures inside and even two bonus tracks.  These are all very good things and this is the reissue this album so richly deserves.

Click to view slideshow.

Uncle Sam were, as any 1537 ultra obsessive fan can tell you** one of my real hard rock faves from the early 90’s and a band I feel were unfairly overlooked, especially when you consider that Larry Miller their guitarist was kind enough to bite (an uncensored) copy of Heaven or Hollywood for me, backstage in Manchester!  How can you not love that? Prince never did that for his fans!

Larry read my post about seeing them live and sent me a comment about it; I’m still thrilled about that.  We’ve exchanged a few mails since then and Larry was kind enough to send me a copy of Uncle Sam’s last album, the Kim Fowley produced, Fourteen Women … Fifteen Days.  Which was a lovely present.  Then I got another comment from a chap who asked me to pass his details on to Larry because he was ‘trying to get in touch with Larry for possible Re-issue deal of old cds’, so I did.  Anyway, around Christmas that year Larry mailed me and told me that Minotaur were re-issuing Heaven or Hollywood, which was brilliant.

Uncle Sam Heaven Hollywood 05

Anyhoo, Larry mailed me a copy of this lovely reissue, with the uncensored cover and told me it wouldn’t have happened without me^, how cool is that?!  For a fan who just wanted to pay homage to one of his old faves, this was just a perfect train of events.  It seems like yesterday I first read about them in Kerrang!, ordered Letters From London^^, met Larry, Dave and Bill in Manchester before seeing them play … to this; 26 years, give or take.  I don’t mean for all of this to sound self-congratulatory at all^*, I’m just full of wonder and joy at it all.

Uncle Sam Heaven Hollywood 06

I’m a happy man, this is a real quality re-release, go and buy (at least) one copy.

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*for a CD.

**think Swimfan but scarier and obsessier, with less shagging.

^I think he’s just being nice, they’d eventually have tracked him down without my help, but I’m damn flattered anyway!

^^I have such a strong memory of opening it on the way back up our farm track, in the sunshine.

^*unlike every other single post I’ve ever done here.


Filed under: Hard Rock, Music, Obsessive behaviour, Record collecting, Uncle Sam Tagged: Fourteen Women...Fifteen Days, Hard Rock, Heaven or Hollywood, Larry Miller, Letters From London, Minotaur Records, Uncle Sam

Dead Man Rawking

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It’s old, it’s rock and there’s a skull on the cover – that’s pretty much all the careful reasoning I put into buying Josefus Dead Man.  Okay so truthfully you can add it was re-released by the ever-reliable Numero Group, they are touted as some of the forefathers of metal and because I liked the sound of the 17-minute title track.  Dead Man didn’t disappoint either.

Numero Group Rockers 01

Formed in Texas from the ashes of several local outfits, Josefus cut their debut LP in Phoenix in 1969 but due to being mucked about by management right from the start immediately changed their name to, the less than stellar, Come and lost all the momentum they’d already built opening the bill locally for the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, Grateful Dead, Ten Years After, John Mayall, Quicksilver Messenger Service, ZZ Top, Bubble Puppy and 13th Floor Elevators, despite never playing a gig outside of their home state.  Dead Man was cut in just 6 hours of studio time with money put up by the father and father-in-law of bassist Ray Turner, the former also designed the striking cover and record label, Hookah Records*.  They split up in December 1970.

All of which is very historical, but is the music any good? I’m no curator after all, I’m mostly interested in how good Dead Man sounds now.  Right here? right now? pretty damn good actually.

Josefus Dead Man 02Josefus Dead Man 05 (2)

Slapping Side 2 straight onto the turntable we get ‘Situation’ 1:55 of energised Yardbirds-influenced rock, with a fabulous amount of attack and echo, plus suitably histrionic vocals from Pete Bailey, who is no stranger to giving it the full Percy at times.  It’s great and by the time you get to really enjoying it, we’re into the reason why I played this side first ‘Dead Man’, all 17:30 of it.  Like all good things it builds slowly from a few atmospherics on up to a spiked bluesy, trippy plod which ignites as soon as the vocals kick in at 4 minutes.  It really is great, lots of drama, some great rhythm changes and freaking out – if you were a heavy progressive band of the time you clearly needed your epic jam in an ‘In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida/Dazed & Confused’ – style.  ‘Dead Man’ is great, it never feels like pointless showing off and never overstays its welcome.

You’re dead, your flesh is turning pale
You’re dead, I see your body laid out on the rail
Dead man, your whole world is out of time
And you wanna live now but there’s only time to die

In fact as no-one else seems to have done so I have transcribed the lyrics to the whole song below, consider it my gift to future generations of stoners**.  Just light up your candles and sing along.

Josefus Dead Man 04

Dead Man certainly doesn’t suffer from 2112-Syndrome, the other side of the LP is just as worth a listen.  In no particular order I’m very taken with their endearingly misspelled cover of ‘Gimmie Shelter’ which comes on like a speeding train, losing all the numb apocalypse of the original but making up for it with extra ROCK! The guitar melody line reminds of Mötörhead’s ‘Bomber’ at one point, no really, Dave Mitchell really hammers it on down.   I’ve also got a real soft spot for the languid, ham-fisted ‘Country Boy’, bemoaning having to work instead of being ‘some rich girl’s toy’, you and me both Josefus.  Whereas ‘Proposition’ features the world’s most blatant Beatles steal, from the then-almost-new ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, to excellent effect.

Josefus Dead Man 08Josefus Dead Man 07

Forty Six years after it came out Dead Man still rocks hard.  The likes of ‘Crazy Man’ and ‘I Need a Woman’ still hit the spot  It is transitional stuff, you can hear the 60s melting into the 70s right here, less uppers, more downers.  Josefus really do deserve to be remembered as the progenitors and nurturers of that early hard rock sound along with Blue Cheer, for intent if not for overall impact on numbers of folk.

Dead man rawking!

Josefus Dead Man 06 (2)Josefus Dead Man 01

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PS: I gleaned most of the history here from an excellent interview with guitarist Dave Mitchell on the Psychedelic Baby site.

*all lovingly reproduced by Numero Group.  By the way, if you have any Texan relatives with original copies knocking about their attic just let me know and I’ll dispose of them for free, as long as they pay the postage for me.

**(To keep myself comparatively sane, I have omitted all ejaculations of ‘Oh yeah’s’, ‘Right now’s etc.)

Dead man I only hear a rattle when you breathe
Dead man I know you see in darkness when you sleep
Dead man you could have been living if you tried
and you wanna live now but there’s only time to die
Dead man you said that fame and fortune was your game
Dead man if it’s cotton or its gold it’s all the same
Dead man once you had a future, its been denied
and you wanna live now but there’s only time to die
You’re dead, your flesh is turning pale
You’re dead, I see your body laid out on the rail
Dead man, your whole world is out of time
and you wanna live now but there’s only time to die
(Repeat first verse – with extra drama and ‘oh yeah!’s)

Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Josefus, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: 1970, Crazy Man, Dave Mitchell Josefus, Dead Man, Doug Tull Josefus, Gimmie Shelter, Houston, Josefus, Pete Bailey Josefus, Ray Turner Josefus, The NUmero Group

Maaaaaannnnn!

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Harsh Toke Light Up And Live; am I alone in thinking there may be some kind of subliminal stoner-weed-endorsement thing going down there? or has the paranoia just set in along with the munchies?

Harsh Toke Light Up 04

I was hipped to this beast of an LP by that all round bad influence Mr J Hubner and I did my best to resist it manfully.  Resist it I did, despite the fact that it was released on the ever-reliable Tee Pee Records.  Resist it I did, despite the fact that it had one of the worst drawn, yet brilliant LP covers I’d seen in ages.  Resist it I did, despite the fact that it only had four tracks on it, one of which was called ‘Plug Into The Moon’.  Resist it I did, despite the fact it was released on clear vinyl … damn! That’s where all my manly resistance was routed.

Harsh Toke Light Up 07

Light Up And Live comes with minimal information.  The band are a four piece from San Diego and the lead guitarist is a pro skater by the name of Justin “Figgy” Figueroa*, Austin Ayub, Richie Belton and Gabe Messer.  In very broad terms they plough a similar furrow to labelmates Earthless^, predominantly instrumental wigged-out space rock and all the essential stoner tropes are in place – predominantly Sabbath (the drummer has a Vol. 4 sticker on his kit) but there are points of difference hereabouts.

Harsh Toke Light Up 02

Light Up And Live kicks off with ‘Rest In Prince’, a reference to Michael Prince Johnson a skater who passed away – the LP is dedicated to him.  What’s interesting straight away is the heavy, heavy organ sound – this could be the second coming of Vincent Crane.  There are vocals but good luck in deciphering a word of ’em! This is heavy, heavy, heavy psych. As you might expect the playing is awesome, the guitar absolutely sizzles but it is the organ and drums that really lead here.  The rhythm almost has a jazz sensitivity to it, it warps and changes throughout and the band follow it deftly, never letting up in their attack.

Harsh Toke Light Up 06

‘Weight Of The Sun’, enters in a quiet fashion and we get a long, gently tribal beat of an intro.  It reminds me of a roller coaster a little, the intro takes us up and up very gently and you sit there, secure in the safety of it all but thrilled, knowing the plunge you’re about to take.  The guitar, twisting and spiralling, rises to meet the beat and you get taken on a cloud ride, all wistful sunny psych indulgence until minor chord elements begin to creep into the sound.  Before you can properly process it all you really are hurtling towards the ground, faster and faster before everything hits slow motion and you realise you’ve been living off nothing but feedback for long minutes now.  Eventually of course you find yourself lowered gently back to the ground via some spacey keyboards, ready to ride again.

Is that a very badly-drawn wizard to my right?
Is that a very badly-drawn wizard to my right?

Look, you all know how this kind of music works.  In the hands of lesser practitioners it could be dull as shite, for me the key isn’t so much virtuosity it’s having the imagination and wit to keep your music flowing and progressing, without that it just becomes so much nauseating self-indulgence.  Harsh Toke never fall into that trap once, they strut their stuff to perfection, but more importantly THEY ROCK HARD! Check out the bass on the title track if you don’t believe me, in fact just lie down on a suitably soft floor and just let the title track roll on over you – this is heavy perfection, maaaaaannnnn!

Harsh Toke Light Up 05

The final track, ‘Plug Into The Moon’, as well as being tricky advice is a more skyscraping affair and again I find myself listening past the guitar histrionics and fixating on the churning rhythm section again, the way they anchor it all down is so impressive, particularly when the track turns into a freeform jam section pointed at the stars.  I hear bits of Amon Düül II amidst all the freakoutery and freakinery.

Harsh Toke Light Up 03

Light Up And Live is a really great LP and an absolute must hear for any of you stoner-psych-guitar-worshipping-satanic-rockpig-freakholes out there.  Even if, like me, the strongest mood altering substance you hit these days is chamomile tea.  To be honest despite the name, I get more of a frenzied, driving, restless vibe from Harsh Toke – this is certainly not navel-gazing stoned music, whatever they may pretend. Hell, who am I kidding, I want to join Harsh Toke.

This is an absolute beast of an album. Praise be.

Harsh Toke Light Up 01 (2)

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PS: Here’s a better intro to them, maybe.

*out of curiosity I just watched some YouTube footage of him defying the laws of physics** and giving an interview that was so full of words and phrases that I didn’t understand, he may as well have been speaking Esperanto.  He is also sickeningly cool.

**gravity, not thermodynamics.

^they have a split EP coming out with Earthless next week.  I may have just accidentally pre-ordered it.  It looks beautiful beyond all mortal reckoning.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Harsh Toke, Music, Record collecting, Stoner rock, Vinyl Tagged: Brian Ellis, Harsh Toke, instrumental, Justin "Figgy" Figueroa, Light Up And Live, Plug Into The Moon, Stoner rock, Tee Pee Records, Weight Of the sun

Okay, The Allman Brothers Band

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My absolute favourite thing about Allman Brothers At Fillmore East album is the introduction by the MC, Michael Ahern, he sounds like he can barely be arsed as he says, ‘Okay, the Allman Brothers Band’ in the same tone you’d ask for your car to be filled up, or for another carrier bag at the supermarket.  None of this whooping and shouting stuff that live LPs sometimes kick off with, nobody screams ‘You wanted the best? You got the best!’, or explodes a 50′ animatronic train through a screen.  No.  The Allman Brothers Band just didn’t need all that fuss.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 01

Struggling to make ends meet, not assisted by some rather rapacious chemical dependencies, the Allman Brothers Band played over 300 shows in 1970, so when March 1971 rolled around and they found themselves supporting Johnny Winter at the Fillmore they grabbed at the chance to lay down some of their onstage fire and chemistry on wax, ably assisted by Tom Dowd.  The production by the way, unlike so many ‘live’ LPs just involved toning down the horn section and the harp player a bit and splicing one track out of two takes – other than that, it’s just as the good lord intended.  For the obsessive weirdoes amongst you there are now a plethora of recordings of every night so that you can play hunt the take, I’m not judging you, but you can’t go wrong just sticking with the original At Fillmore East in my view.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 06

Funnily enough I don’t really rate the first three tracks on At Fillmore East very highly, to my jaded old ears they’re pleasant enough but a bit light and inconsequential.  The playing is never less than stellar but I don’t hear anything to get excited about on them, give me Taj Mahal’s mighty version of ‘Statesboro Blues’ any day.  This is possibly an effect of hearing so many of these tones and licks stolen and refracted through various burned out 80’s dudes that even the likes of ‘Stormy Monday’ just hit a samey groove for me – some bespectacled players out there stole a whole lot from Duane and co.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 07

So bearing in mind that I’ve just airily dismissed three tracks from a seven track LP out of hand, what’s so special about the rest?

Well, At Fillmore East really takes to the skies from its’ second side onwards and ‘You Don’t Love Me’ a 19-minute jam around the old Willie Cobbs number.  The band immediately sound energised barreling into a great little shuffling groove and when Duane, after volleying off a whole barrage of scorching licks, starts to solo the whole band just drop away – possibly lost in the same feeling of awe as the rest of us.  This is just greatness on wax.  What impresses me so much is that Duane and the band never lose sight of the song throughout all this extended virtuosity, they keep cutting back to certain notes and phrases that make it all seem part of an organic whole.  The extended quoting from the melody of ‘An Ode To Joy’ at the end of the track just raises it all up a notch on the Sublime-o-meter.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 03 (2)

The instrumental ‘Hot ‘Lanta’ is a whole different kettle of fish.  The feel is immediately jazzier and progressive, showing off the joint drumming of Jai Johanny Johanson and, the frigging wonderfully named, Butch Trucks at their absolute best.  I hear some Santana in there too.  What impresses me throughout is the incredible turn-on-a-dime dexterity of the Allman Brothers Band, they always sound really light on their feet to me, like they could, if called upon, flip Zappa-like into a totally different genre at the snap of the fingers.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 02

Best of all for me is the utterly transcendent ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’, named after a tombstone in the same cemetery in Macon, Georgia that both Duane Allman and Berry Oakley would grace only 20 months after this track was recorded.  This is such a brilliant track too, the band just glide – Dickie Betts’ guitaring is quite incredible on this one and the Latin rhythms are deployed to true maximum effect, creating a fabulously inspired gumbo of jazz, blues, Latin and rock.  The beauty of it all is that it all sounds so natural and unstudied, the band are just flying.

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I said ‘best of all’ then but what does that then make ‘Whipping Post’? joint best of all maybe? Duane’s vocals are excellent here too.  Do you really need to make me trot out everything I’ve just written over the last three paragraphs again? Good.  Given the subject matter* this is a more emotional, heavier blues-based number with some truly elegiac passages, where those guitar strings really get tested.

So, that’s what’s so special about At Fillmore East and why it is such a worthwhile LP.  This isn’t just about musical virtuosity, there are plenty of albums out there that plough that furrow, the album really captures a group of exceptional musicians at the pinnacle of their game, letting us marvel at the way they mesh and laying out all their interplay for our delectation.  It takes an exceptional bunch of hardened time-served vets to sound simultaneously this together and this free and I really like the way that the band, unlike so many of their peers** don’t just reach for the distortion and heavy volume to punch their way across, this is way subtler.

Allman Brothers At Fillmore East 04 (2)

But, in-depth musical analysis isn’t why you’re here you want to know about the superficialities.  I love the cover unreservedly, although I was shattered to learn it wasn’t actually taken out back of the Fillmore East but back in Macon, Georgia.  The front cover is so great because of the fact that all the band are genuinely amused that Duane was hiding a stash of bad things in his lap that he’d got from a dealer friend of his during the photo shoot – it was one of those heaven sent moments because it shows the band looking as free and natural as the grooves within.  The back cover is also just perfect, showing the roadies drinking their payment for moving all the gear outside – you wouldn’t want to mess with those gentleman is all I’m saying.  The dude in the inset picture? tour manager Twiggs Lyndon Jr.  The reason he wasn’t sat on the cases? he was awaiting trial for stabbing an unarmed club owner who owed the band money.  He walked.  You wouldn’t want to mess with these gentlemen, indeed.

‘Okay, the Allman Brothers Band’ .

Twiggs On the Wall
Twiggs On the Wall

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*one of them mean mistreating woman types.  You know the sort, the type that’ll do you wrong twice before breakfast and once after lunch on an average day.

**most of whom I love for the fact.


Filed under: Allman Brothers Band, Culture, Music, Record collecting, Southern Rock, Vinyl Tagged: Allman Brothers Band, At Fillmore East, Butch Trucks, Duane Allman, Hot Lanta, Southern Rock, Twiggs Lyndon Jr, Whipping Post, You Don't Love Me

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na!

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Thunder Dirty Love 01

On 28 February 1990 I came back from an open day at Leeds University with a vague idea I quite wanted to go there in October to study and, much more importantly, the shaped picture disc of Thunder Dirty Love*.  Let me just pause for a second and reflect just how damn great a thing of awe, joy and beauty the shaped picture disc is – I honestly believe it to be the invention, that above all others, shows how much we have evolved from the primitive hirsute man-apes we once were as a species** and why our civilisation is supreme compared with under-achievers like the ancient Egyptians – pyramids are all great and stuff, but show me the shaped picture discs Horus! Eh?

Thunder Dirty Love 02

I had already seen Thunder opening for Aerosmith the previous Autumn and had been won over, although I had been a bit miffed that Aerosmith hadn’t brought a big-name US band over as support act.  Dirty Love was the first single they had released since and here I was clutching it tight to me on my journey home with my girlfriend, who wouldn’t hold that exalted title for much longer^.  So it goes.

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Not this kind of Dirty Love.

The title track is a great, rather simplistic blues rock stomp in a classic stylee, which robbed a great guitar intro from T-Rex.  ‘Dirty Love’ is one of those funny songs that is instantly so familiar that you’d swear you had heard it before, it’s all rather well put together but still with enough rough bits around the edges to make it more than a cookie cutter track.  Thunder were always a very likable, very classy bunch.  I was a bit disappointed to find however that rather than a celebration of Dirty Love (Latin: Coitus Rarius In-Matrimonius), it’s a kiss-off to one of them dirty, two-timing mean ho-bags so beloved of male songwriters.  When Danny Bowes sang ‘I don’t need your dirty love’, I’m afraid I just couldn’t relate to the sentiment – what was the man saying?! From my own experience surely he should have been singing, ‘I don’t respect myself for craving your dirty love, every hour of every day, with every molecule in my body but I’ll have a slice anyway, if that’s okay with you’ – maybe the lyric just didn’t quite scan that way around.

Not this kind of Dirty Love.
Not this kind of Dirty Love either.

I’m always a sucker for a band who chuck in a load of ‘Na na na na na na na’ s in a song and I also really rather like the lines,

I see you walking by, you’ve got that faraway look in your eye
It was only yesterday, like a cheap suit you were all over me

B-side was the very B-sidey ‘Fired Up’, you can just tell it was a track that hadn’t made the grade for their debut LP Backstreet Symphony.  They used to include it in their live sets and it is a bit of a rockier turn with a good heavy guitar solo, it’s performed and sung very well it just lacks a bit of songwriting sparkle.

Thunder Dirty Love 06

And that would be that if I was a normal person of sound mind.  I’m not, 6 months later I bought the 12″ clear vinyl ‘Banner Pack’ version of Dirty Love.  I had never owned a banner pack before, what was it?  well, folks it’s basically a long thin poster with the band’ logo on it plus several shots of the band, an endearingly non-photogenic lot who really shouldn’t have been allowed to pick their own clothes, staring moodily into woodland/mountain passes etc.  It remains the only banner pack I own, I suspect there may have been a UN Banner Pack Non-Proliferation Treaty passed in late 1990, to keep all joy and excitement in the world at sustainable levels.

Click to see properly. My camera gave up part way through and I'm such a perfectionist I just shrugged my shoulders.
Click to see properly. My camera gave up part way through and I’m such a perfectionist I just shrugged my shoulders and thought ‘Sod it!’

The Dirty Love 12″ contains a 6:07 version of ‘Dirty Love’, which packs in a whole load more T-Rex steals, some improvised ‘oh no’s and ‘Ooh, yeah’s and is genuinely a better, more fun version of the song.  The bit I like best is when it fades out at the end and then fades up again after a few seconds with Danny Bowes raving about how he is a true Cockney, born within the sound of Bow Bells in London, before ending with a heartfelt ‘Bollocks!’, effectively ending the song with a flourish akin to the sublime dismount from an Eastern Bloc gymnast, it’s definitely worth a 10 from me.  There’s also a live version of ‘She’s So Fine’ which is, umm, so fine but doesn’t raise the pulse rate hugely, despite Thunder always being a cracking band to go and see.

Thunder Dirty Love 09Thunder Dirty Love 09a

Fire up the video below for some great 1990 rock-style fun.  Things were simpler back then and you get a real sense of the fun and charm this lot had, but Danny … that vest!

Thunder Dirty Love 07

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PS: I picked this one after rapping with Mr Mike Ladano yesterday over just how many gimmicks bands would cram onto releases in order to entice sheep like me into parting with their cash.  bet you haven’t got a banner pack!

*and Dawn After Dark Maximum Overdrive and Salty Dog Every Dog Has It’s Day … okay so I didn’t get to go out to big city record shops very often; but let’s keep this simple.

**and who are often still to be found throughout West Wales, having formed their own rudimentary society.

^she, very understandably, dumped me – possibly preferring to find herself someone a bit more three-dimensional and attentive to go out with, rather than an overgrown child on the cusp of developing full-blown terminal Vinylitis.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Thunder, Vinyl Tagged: 12", Banner Pack, Clear Vinyl, Dirty Love, Fired Up, Leeds university, Shaped picture disc, Thunder

Swearing Just To Swear: An Interview With Jed Maheu From Zig-Zags

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I really have a new favourite band, Zig-Zags, their Running Out Of Red LP saved a day for me when I lucked onto it and it has taken me to some great places ever since.  They’re ferocious, funny, and, umm, freaking great!  You want proof?

Jed Maheu was kind enough to take time out from wielding his axe to answer a carefully crafted bunch of very serious questions from me – you want to know about US politics, Brexit and Billy Ray Cyrus? then you’ve come to the right place, brother.  Hell, there’s even some technical guitar sound bits in there just to prove that I’m a heavyweight rock interviewer type.

Zig Zags Running Out Of Red 02

How do you make an LP sound simultaneously so now and so 70s?  Well the lyrics are all pre-internet and most of the equipment we use is old too and we’re old, and I was born in the 70’s so there’s that.  I guess ’cause now sucks so why try to sound like now?

When you recorded ‘They Came For Us’, did you realize what a Godlike moment of genius you’d created?  Haha dude, we all had to get stoned including the engineer cause we couldn’t get the tempo right.  We kept trying and it wasnt feeling right then everyone got high and nailed the fucker first try.  I remember being very aware of how my fingers felt on the guitar strings and then the first time I listened back I thought the song was like a half hour long.

Tell me something technical about the guitar sound please, so this looks like a proper interview done by someone who knows about flangers and reverb and suchlike.  Well it’s the amp mostly.  I bought the amp right before the band started and it’s kinda shaped the sound.  It’s a music man HD150, super fucking loud.  No preamp tubes so it’s sounds like a solid state.  Like Greg Ginns gear or some shit.  It takes pedals real well so you can really fuck with the sound but the secret is the built-in Phaser.  It says Tremolo on the amp but I never heard no fucking tremolo sound like that so I call it a phaser.  It’s a signature of the Zig-Zags sound.

Zig Zags Running Out Of Red 04

What’s the most rock and roll item in your wardrobe?  I have a turquoise encrusted concho belt. Its real deal native american. Once when I was broke I tried to sell it on eBay but its hard to sell real native american stuff on there without filling out a form.  I also have a Gold Record. I also tried to sell it on eBay once but they wouldn’t let me due to some copyright bullshit. 

Do you think rock and metal can get more caught up in nostalgia sometimes than is healthy for the scene?  Oh yea, the way these clowns dress and they’re like acting like they’re in a biker gang while texting on their iPhone.  Get over it.  Its like people who do those civil war reenactments.  This is Rock and Roll reenactment.  It aint the worst thing in the world cause ya know Maiden and Minor Threat rule so I would rather sound like that, but you can’t pretend that Limp Bizkit never happened and now you’re dressing like it’s fucking Woodstock, or some shit.  I call my local biker gang “The Baristas”. 

So US Politics, from what I read, the big debate is whether transgender lady-man dudes should be able to buy assault rifles in the men’s room of their original gender in Indiana – where do you stand on this issue?  I’m bored talking about guns.  I grew up having them my whole life, so yea.  Can the govt just do one fucking thing and keep them out of the hands of crazy people?  Is it that fucking hard?  I see crazy dudes and I cross the street.  If one comes into the gun shop lets at least get the dudes e-mail first and if he wants to shoot his dick off so he can rise in the ranks of women’s tennis than at least we’ll know how to contact him to say “Good Job Ma’am”.

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Out on the road do you guys all get a bit crazy and stay up ‘til 11pm some nights (like Black Sabbath used to)?  We used to but as the music got faster and gnarlier we had to stop getting drunk before the show, so usually we don’t start drinking til after we play which is like 1, and then at that point you’re not drunk enough to do anything too stupid.

What’s the most METAL album in your collection? P.I.L “Metal Box” The whole thing is totally metal.

Was your band name a deliberate attempt to cosy up to ZZ Top in, neurotically alphabetized, record collections?   I always heard that if you name your business with like a lot of A’s you’ll do well like “AAA Bathrooms and Fixtures” so I was thinking about doing the opposite of that.

Zig Zags Running Red 01

What’s the best city being in the Zig-Zags has taken you to?  Prague, Berlin, Paris, Austin, Vienna, Portland, Seattle, San Antonio, New York, Barcelona, Bilbao, and some other small French town that I can’t remember.

What music can you guys all agree on? Is there any music that’s banned in the van?  I think we all like country music, like 70’s country and shit like that.  Uhhh Steve Miller and Led Zeppelin aren’t really allowed but that’s not me.  We don’t listen to tons of metal or punk shit cause it’s too stressful and makes me wanna circle pit in the van.  90’s hip hop is always a solid choice.  The new stuff I have a hard time following.

When do we get to see you come over and play in Liverpool?  We are down 100% to play anywhere anytime as long as someone can cover whatever the cost of getting us there. Which maybe hard now thanks to Brexit.

Zig Zags Running Out Of Red 01

What superpowers would you opt for and why? or do you have any already?  Be cool to be able to eat as much as you want and not get fat.  Not sure how you could help others except ya know just being somebody that folks look up to and maybe that would be enough.  Sorry man this question is super personal, so it’s hard to answer.

How much do your songs change for you and take on their own life when you play ‘em out live every night?  Mainly just with little guitar fuckerys every now and then.  We write so much all the time that I think we need to really look into putting the songs together in an order that really puts on a show ya know?  Not just playing shit randomly.  Then once that feels right you can start improvising based on people reactions or just the vibe of the place ya know?

Zig Zags Running Red 02

I love ‘Running Out Of Red’ – you really rescued a shitty day for me when I bought it and as a tribute I’ve now developed a real detailed, angry, very expressive modern dance routine for most of it (still finding the moves for ‘Meat Man’ a bit elusive) – can we go out on tour as an arty cultural multi-media experience?  So you would be like our version of “Soy Bomb” I would say yes but we need another mouth to feed like you guys need to leave the EU…oh wait.

I’m a big swearing fan, I still think it’s real funny and clever and ‘Running Out of Red’ really delivers on the cussing front.  Was this a deliberate attempt to target the obscenity demographic?  Oh man I love swearing just to swear.  It’s like my friend’s son who is 7 when he swears it cracks me up.  I think it’s really childish and fun too.  I swear like a motherfucker when I’m driving in  LA and I yell super fucked up shit at like old lady drivers like I’ll scream “Cocksucker Motherfucker”, or shit that just comes out wrong like “Dumb dickless motherfuck shit lips” and I pound on the steering wheel.

I know you released a split single with ‘em, but have you ever played live with my faves The Shrine? Or my all-time faves Fu Manchu?  Played live with the Shrine a bunch of times but not in like the last year cause their schedule is so crazy and ours is sometimes crazy.  Never Fu Manchu. 

Is ‘My Lighter’ a true story?  Dude it’s a true story every fucking day man.  Whenever you’re smoking you need a light and my shit is strewn all over the place.  Plus dudes used to carve shit into their Zippos in Vietnam so it’s a take off of that.  

How much of the year are you able to spend out on the road?  This year about 3 months total probably which has been the most so far.  I’d be stoked if we did like 6 but ya know the demand has to be there.  I think were just getting started honestly. 

What’s the most star struck you’ve ever been meeting someone?  Billy Childish?  Or James and Lars from Metallica?  I met the guitarist from Georgia Satellites once and that was cool.  Gwynyth Paltrow?  I meet a lot of famous people cause I live in Hollywood.  Billy Ray Cyrus used to practice right next to us and then one time I was doing some comedy shit on the Tonight Show back when Jay Leno was the host and so I went down to his dressing room to say hi and so that was cool ya know just to be on the same level as a true artist like Billy Ray Cyrus.

Zig Zags Running Red 03

When are you going to release a huge 70’s-style rock Christmas single?  I did a children’s record all about food, and one song is a rip off of like the velvet underground waiting for my man but it’s this kid and he’s trying to score chocolate chips so he can make the cookies, but ya know it’s really about drugs.  And obviously we would do a Halloween record dude. 

What’s next for Zig-Zags?  US Tour, then European tour still sorting out the dates.  We just demo’ed some new songs that I’m super fucking stoked on.  Just get heavier and thrashier…and uhh were gonna open for Trump on all his campaign spots just to ya know get these dick-lickers out there pumped up before Jesus Christ comes back to earth and tells us all how bad we fucked shit up.

… But until that time, about mid-December 2016 by my reckoning, it’s your duty as a 1537 reader/as a human/ as a sentient being, hell, even as an amoeboid life-form dwelling in the sump oil of our end-times to rock 70 shades of shit out of Running Out Of Red.  Zig-Zags are a great band and deserve all your support, go and treat yourself and all your loved ones to copies of the album – I know how much your grandma would love singing along to ‘No Brains, No Balls’.  True story.

675 Down (still)

PS: This is older, but equally brilliant – how much do I want to see these guys play?!


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Interview, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl, Zig-Zags Tagged: 1537 Interview, Brexit, Giving Up The Ghost, Gratuitous Swearing, Jed Maheu, My Lighter, Running Out Of Red, Zig-Zags

A Side Order Of Slide, Lorraine

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I’m a bit conflicted.  I’ve been just served a meal.  It has been cooked really well.  It has some of my favourite ingredients in it.  It is beautifully presented and I even like the pattern on the plate.  It is fine, I ate it all up but I’m not satisfied.  I still feel hungry.  Which is kind of how I feel about The Temperance Movement White Bear, the first 2016 LP I bought this year.

Temperance Movement White Bear 01

I enjoyed the band’s self-titled debut LP but thought it could have done with a bit of a vicious song cull* to make it shorter and more listenable.  I was excited enough about this album to pre-order it, which is how I’ve got a white vinyl version complete with a print signed by all the band, limited to 200 copies**.  White Bear is a classy package too, nice understated cover, good art and a huge poster/lyric sheet – it really does look the part, recalling all those same venerable Brit-rock ports of call as the band’s sound does, Bad Company, Free, Humble Pie and, even, Reef.

Temperance Movement White Bear 04

Opener ‘Three Bulleits’, their spelling not mine, swaggers in with a certain stomp of a rhythm and trading on Phil Campbell’s gruff, melodic voice which is pretty much The Temperance Movement’s best weapon.  The guitars circle and churn without really drawing blood, which isn’t a good thing in context.  ‘Three …’ is fine, but easily forgotten ten minutes later.  Better by far is ‘Get Yourself Free’ which keeps the swagger and showcases a real swinging rhythm piloted by bassist Nick Fyffe, who was in Jamiroquai’s band for years.  It is a great song with a great dusty, gutsy sound harking back again to Bad Company at their least diluted.

Temperance Movement White Bear 02Temperance Movement White Bear 06

The next few tracks on White Bear are less successful, ‘A Pleasant Peace I feel’ garbing itself in some atmospherics borrowed from U2, sung beautifully of course but without enough of a song in there.  ‘Modern Massacre’^ rocks it up in a commendably raw fashion and whilst the guitars do slice and dice, again I’m wanting more of a song behind it all.  The title track gives us what we crave though, in spades, with a side order of slide, some real dramatic dynamics and a chaotic guitar solo on top, much more memorable.

Temperance Movement White Bear 03Temperance Movement White Bear 05

Best of all though and I’d say by far the best track The Temperance Movement have cut so far, is ‘Oh Lorraine’ which was a real revelation for me.  It’s built on an almost baggy beat from Fyffe and drummer Damon Wilson and the vocal melodies and production is just spot on.  Basically what we have here is a kick ass rock band really discovering their groove and putting down a superb organically sourced dance track, I can and have listened to this on repeat over and over and over.  This is what I wanted, something that sculpts something very new/now from old components.  In fact it reminds me a lot of the band Music and that really is a compliment^*.  Here’s a live version from 2 years ago with a much more Faces and bluegrass feel:

After that the pickings get a little less choice again although I quite like the bluesier ‘The Sun & Moon Roll Around Too Soon’ which really reminds me of a John Lennon song I can’t quite place.

Temperance Movement White Bear 08

So overall White Bear is good, but a little frustrating because I feel it wouldn’t need too much more to drag a great album out of this band, all the components are right there and the band are just too good to be praised for having three great songs on an album.  Maybe their third will fill up my mighty stomach of rock!^^.

678 Down.

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PS: I deliberately didn’t re-read Deke’s review of this until now – he had the advantage of seeing them kick it live too.

*although that might be because the vinyl has two bonus tracks.

**well, excitement and the fact that I’m an easily manipulated spineless sucker for whatever tidbits record labels deign to throw in my direction.

^why does it always take me three goes to spell that word?!

^*remember them? bunch of kids from Leeds? made this beauty (and one of my fave videos in the process):

Although I might just like this one so much because I dance like the singer does.

^^probably best not pursue this metaphor any further!

 


Filed under: Brit rock, Culture, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Temperance Movement, Vinyl Tagged: Earache Records, Nick Fyffe, Oh Lorraine, Phil Campbell, Take the long road and walk it, The Temperance Movement, Three Bulleits, White Bear

Holiday Like It’s 1990

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Sunset in Bosherston (no filters, editing etc.)
Sunset in Bosherston (no filters, editing etc.)

Tired? Listless? Lost your savoir faire and your sang-froid and your soupe de jour? Feel like it’s all a bit pointless? well stop. Do not worry, my people, I’m back from my holidays in sunny* Pembrokeshire – the beautiful, history rich and unspoilt coastal end of Wales.  We stayed in a lovely cottage, spent our days walking the cliffs and doing beach, nature and history-related thangs and our evenings playing games, reading and over-indulging.  Almost best of all though was no wifi, no mobile reception and no music for the last week or so, a total cut off and brain wipe.  It was great and gave me a very necessary means of recharging my batteries after a horrid couple of months of stress, but that’s enough about me-type-stuff.

Broadhaven Beach, paradise as far as I'm concerned.
Broadhaven Beach, paradise as far as I’m concerned.
Really arty photo, to show off my mad camera skillz and sensitivite, creative nature (chicks love that)
Really arty photo, to show off my mad camera skillz and sensitive, creative nature (chicks love that).

In the gorgeous town of Tenby I stumbled across Dales Records a brilliant and rightly fêted record shop that celebrated its’ 60th anniversary in 2014** and leafing through the hard rock/metal section I was struck by what a lot of obscure stuff there was from 1990 in brilliant condition too, LPs I remember reading all about in Kerrang! I assumed they had come from someone’s collection but was told that the guys in the shop had found a few forgotten boxes of stock from 1990 in their basement so they were all brand-new buried treasure – a real rockin’ time capsule.

Rhino Kill

I snaffled up Kill For Thrills Dynamite From Nightmareland, to replace my long gone much-cherished promo cassette and Rhino Bucket, worst band name ever candidates and Neanderthal AC/DC sound-alikes of ‘Even The Sun Goes Down’ fame.  I passed on the Lisa Dominique picture disc^.

Altogether now, holidaymakers:

You say you’re a lady
And ladies got class
I don’t need no Prima Donna
All I need is a piece of ass

680 Down (still).

*and I’m not being ironic, for once, it really was!

**it features in the great documentary Last Shop Standing (although they aren’t specifically in this trailer).

^Kerrang! spent years pushing her at us teenage rockistas, but even in my hormonal fug I managed to resist. I have ears.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Music, Obsessive behaviour, Record collecting, Rock, Self-indulgent nonsense, Vinyl Tagged: Bosherston, Dynamite From Nightmareland, Kill For Thrills, Lisa Dominique, Pembrokeshire, Rhino Bucket, Soupe De Jour, Summer Holidays in Pembrokeshire, Wales

Extended Howling Mix

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Picture a scruffy skinny long-haired student walking home from university – big white Hi-Tec baseball boots, religion-revealing ripped jeans and a grubby band T-shirt, you know the sort.  This chap had to pass no fewer than three second-hand record shops on his way home from the library to have a bit of a midday sleep, it wasn’t an easy life for him.  Our hero passes the first two disc emporiums without breaking stride, knowing he has just enough cash in the pocket of his patched denim jacket to buy a sandwich from the bakery*, fair enough.  Just before the bakery on Headingley Lane in Leeds, next to the dusty and permanently empty barber’s shop, were a darkly enticing set of steps leading down into a subterranean record bazaar, possibly established by Satan as a snare to entrap the mortal soul of weak-minded sinners like him, or equally possibly by a nice man called Geoff^.  Our hero slackens his pace, caught between duty and depravity for a brief second we know he will ultimately do the right thing.

Thirty minutes later he strides back up into the sunlight clutching the 12″ of Cult Wildflower.  Food’s for wimps anyway.

Cult Wildflower 03

I’ve no idea how the Special Limited Edition Australian Tour EP 12″ Cult Wildflower made it into that shop in Leeds whose name I can’t remember, I’d like to think it had some dramatic back story involving star-crossed lovers, a car chase, betrayal, bad drugs, a drag queen knife fight and windsurfing, but I suspect someone probably just bought it on import in HMV.  Anyway, two remixes of great Cult tracks – one of which was an ‘extended rock mix’ no less and three live tracks, has to be good right?

Cult Wildflower 05

Second track first, an 8-minute beast: ‘She Sells Sanctuary (Howling Mix)’.  takes one of my favourite ever rock singles and de-rockizes it good style. It begins with a few oddly synthesized wolf howls** and then adds a ‘rock’ beat that sounds suspiciously like one of the pre-set ones found on cheap keyboards of a certain vintage, usually next to bossa nova.  It’s all a bit shit and then after a certain point the keyboard trills die down a bit and they start phasing in Billy Duffy’s incredible guitar noise and it all starts to make sense.  I mean it’s as ‘authentic’ and ‘rock’ as Paula Abdul, but that’s okay.  After 8 minutes I’ve submitted entirely.  Interestingly nobody seems to want to take credit for the remixing here, there are literally no credits for this version.

Cult Wildflower 07

Whereas Rick Rubin, George Drakoulias, Andy wallace, Ron St. Germain AND François Kevorkian^^ are all jostling to take credit for ‘Wildflower (Extended Rock Mix)’, which is slightly puzzling to me given that it’s a big shiny heap of bollocks.  I really like the basic track and most of it is here, albeit occasionally obscured by extraneous phased drums and surplus-to-requirement strums.  Sorry but it really is an exercise in gilding the lily^*.

My attempt at doing a Mapplethorpe
My attempt at doing a Mapplethorpe

The live tracks are … okay, I’m never much of a fan of live B-sides to be honest.  ‘Love Trooper’ sounds live in the studio, ‘Horse Nation’ is full on raggedy and raucous and I thoroughly enjoyed the bits of Zeppelin’s ‘Bring It On Home’ they drop into an otherwise loud, but undistinguished ‘Outlaw’.

Cult Wildflower 04

I’m glad I own Wildflower and not just for the yonic symbol on the front cover.  It is definitely worth the price of a sandwich.

Cult Wildflower 06

682 Down.

I'm really pleased with the textures on this one, he said in a self-congratulatory fashion.
I’m really pleased with the textures on this one, he said in a self-congratulatory fashion.

This video captures the extreme excitement of the extended rock mix:

*fool hasn’t realised that actually getting his shit together enough to buy bread and stuff to make his own sandwiches every day would save him enough cash to buy even more LPs.

**reminding us that Mr Astbury wasn’t in fact a slightly comical man from Bradford, but a wolf child howling at the moon, free, wild and sexy; or something a bit like that.

^an inordinate amount of record shops are run/staffed by men called Geoff.  There should be some sort of enquiry.

^^Not sure why this track needed an assisted death, but there you go.

^*with golden poop.


Filed under: Cult, Culture, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Vinyl Tagged: Cult, Kevorkian, She Sells Sanctuary (Howling Mix), Virgin Records, Wildflower (Extended Rock Mix), WildFlower Australian Tour EP, Yonic Symbol

Red Fang – Shadows

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There I was trying to write a wonderfully crafted, finely nuanced review of something or other on a Friday night and it just wasn’t working, I couldn’t sustain my word on.  Hey, it happens, I am tired and stressed after the working week.  I was just about to pack it all in and then I get an eMail from Relapse Records and Shazam! I was having fun again, courtesy of one of my favourite bands, Red Fang.

I always love their videos, they’re full of debauchery, wit and probably some more wit again.  If you don’t enjoy this then I’m afraid we can’t hang out together.

Best of all? I’m going to go and see them 3 weeks tonight!

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688 Down (again).

PS: possibly my fave, non-titillating music video ever (just in case you need reminding), it’s also almost exactly the same story as above, as the band say at the end of ‘Shadows’:


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Music, Red Fang Tagged: Predator Video, Red Fang, Red Fang Shadows, Relapse Records

M.I.L.F

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… Mothers I’d Like to Funk, obviously – I’m not one of those crude chaps from one of those new countries.

I’d wanted a copy of Mother’s Finest Iron Age for 25 years before I ever stumbled across a copy, so this album had a hell of a lot of anticipation to live up to before I ever heard a damn note.  I first heard of this little beauty from 1981 in a series of 4 booklets Kerrang! published in 1989 of the 100 best rock and metal LPs ever*, Iron Age was #90 and it just sounded intriguing, a multi-racial band from Georgia kicking out some really heavy-duty hard rock and funk, but never quite getting the breaks.

mothers-finest-iron-age-08

Mother’s Finest had two vocalists Glenn Murdock and the fabulous Baby Jean Kennedy, he’s really good but she just kicks it into the stratosphere like a cross between Tina Turner giving it loads on ‘Nutbush City Limits’ and Betty Davis, I kid you not.  In fact the band as a whole are pretty splendid, Moses Mo on guitar and B.B on drums showing that skinny white dudes can funk it up** and Wizzard on bass guitar was a very fine player indeed.

mothers-finest-iron-age-01

From the robot punching its way through a wall on the cover, to the fist-in-your-face guitar sound, to the fetchingly puerile MF logo, Iron Age isn’t a subtle beast at all.  Which is great. ‘U Turn Me On’, ‘Luv Drug’, ‘Rock ‘N Roll 2 Nite’, ‘All The Way’ – you get the picture? take your introspection elsewhere, it isn’t wanted here.  What’s interesting is the sound mirrors this perfectly too, producer Jeff Glixman gives the album a really up front, tough and loud quality – to be honest it’s a bit much over the course of a whole LP, but it certainly works.  Mother’s Finest already had four studio LPs in the can by the time they recorded Iron Age and this was the LP, with extra rock juice that was going to catapult them up to the next level.

mothers-finest-iron-age-04

Take ‘All The way’, where over a slinky riff Baby Jean pulls the pin on her sex grenade, spraying us all with saucy shrapnel^ – imagine a funkier, deeper sounding Van Halen fronted by a Nubian banshee and you’d be about half way there; which is a state Baby Jean is keen to tell us is not where she cares to be left.  Ms Kennedy yowls about real men between the sheets, teasing and preening and dropping lines about ‘being man enough to take me all the way’.  It’s just wonderful, try it.

mothers-finest-iron-age-07

Iron Age is one of those rare rock beasts which have a weak track as an opener, ‘Movin’ On’ sounds like a hospitalised Black Oak Arkansas, there’s a lot of power here but not enough of a song containing it.  The quality needle takes a jump up on the first bar of the next track ‘Luv Drug’ and stays there for the rest of the side.  I’m particularly fond of ‘Rock ‘N Roll 2 Nite’, which despite certain titular similarities is way better than that other song called that, the guitaring from Moses Mo is particularly biting on this one too (‘Rock and roll kids, rock and roll ladies / We’re gonna rock on through the 1980’s’). 

mothers-finest-iron-age-02

Now there is some unexpected cookery advice on ‘U Turn Me On’, sung by Murdock in his best Billy Gibbons drawl – something about taking apple pie and making it all warm and welcoming … now I like dessert as much as the next man, but I can’t quite say it deflaccidates my donglebunny, ladies.

Another thing to really like about Iron Age is that there are no ballads, which is such a good thing to find in an early 80’s release.  Possibly the closest is ‘Evolution’ which slows things down a notch, but without sacrificing one iota of power, Baby Jean really sing slings this sucker skywards over the top of a riff that sounds an awful lot like all the best bits of Y&T and Ratt to my ears, years early. Unfortunately for me you’ve had all the best tracks by then, the last four on Iron Age are a bit more samey, a bit less inspired.  Don’t get me wrong though the band sound as committed as hell on each and every second and whilst I like the weaponized T-Rex I can hear on ‘Time’ and the fast choogling ‘Earthling’ which does boast some more stinging guitar from Moses Mo.  Maybe it’s just a lack of real variation – ahh, maybe that’s why they put ballads in, normally.

mothers-finest-iron-age-05
Who lists the tracks on a LP in alphabetical order?!! That’s just insanity.

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Sadly Iron Age wasn’t the springboard the band needed to push them onto the next level of stardom, despite incendiary live shows and support slots with the likes of Sabbath, AC/DC, Nugent, The Who and Aerosmith^* it never quite happened – very sadly in the segmented world of US radio, they were just too funky for straight white rock stations and too rocky for black R&B stations.  They ended up splitting and individuals ended up working with Molly Hatchet, Stevie Nicks and others, Baby Jean even had a track on the Breakfast Club soundtrack.

mothers-finest-iron-age-03

But spare your tears and just have a gander at Mother’s Finest in their prime, they really don’t make bands like this any more!

691 Down.

PS: I know the Rockplast footage is a couple years pre-Iron Age (Bronze? Stone?) but it just rocks.

*I think it was 1989.  Physical Graffiti won, of course.  It will surprise nobody but I used to tick them off as I bought them.  It will still surprise nobody that I still do, I now have 67 of them- basically most of the ones I want, I can’t see myself springing for Michael Bolton’s Everybody’s Crazy Now any time soon.

**check out the live stuff, they haven’t a buttock between the pair of them.

^note to self, need a less dodgy metaphor before I even think of publishing this!

^*they had a reputation for blowing the headliners off stage, no matter how big, or who they were.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Mother's Finest, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Vinyl Tagged: 1981, 80s Hard Rock, Atlantic Records, Baby Jean Kennedy, Betty Davis, Glenn Murdock, Iron Age, Jeff Glixman, Kerrang!, MILF acronym, Moses Mo, Mother's Finest, Wizzard

Baldness, Beach Keyboards, Bras, Bullrushes

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dan-reed-network-slam-05-2

Wow.  I have just seen the light.  I was a boy 5 minutes ago, now I’m a man.  ‘Make It Easy’ by Dan Reed Network is the single most entertaining rock video I have ever seen*, it is soooo 1989!!  Thrill to scenes of:

  • Unexpurgated keyboard playing on the beach!
  • Dan, fearlessly, singing amongst some bulrushes!
  • A chick putting on a front-fastening bra!
  • Unexplained rainfall on some of the band!
  • Crazy, reckless, face washing!
  • Uncensored shots of the single worst pair of trousers in the whole of rock!

Best of all though? ‘Make It Easy’ is a really good, poppy funky rock track still – it has aged much better than I thought it would.  Which is just as well as it is the opener from Dan Reed Network Slam, another refugee from Mrs 1537’s LP collection on my shelves.  Mrs 1537 saw Mr Reed** twice and to this day will tell you, admiringly, that he was gorgeous and ‘moved like a cat’^. Hmm.

dan-reed-network-slam-04

There’s a good story attached to the Dan Reed Network, a South Dakota farm boy of Filipino heritage leading a defiantly multi-racial band seemingly destined to be THE NEXT BIG THING when Slam was released in 1989.  After all Slam was produced by, His Immortal Coolness, Nile Rodgers, Dan Reed Network were managed by Q Prime management and they had/were about to go on high-profile opening slots for Bon Jovi and the Rolling Stones.  They had some great tunes, a great look and a real frontman.  Then came The Hair Incident.  The morning before the video to ‘Rainbow Child’ was shot Dan Reed, feeling the weight of all manner of expectation and pressure shaved his head.  No big deal for a rocker in 2016, this totally, like totally totally, cooked their collective goose in 1989. To a ridiculous extent.

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Then came a lacklustre LP, break-up, all manner of lost years as a club co-owner in Portland and finally full-blown crack addiction.  Oh and there was the time Dan interviewed the Dalai Lama for Spin Magazine in there somewhere too.  Finally salvation came in the form of songwriting, teaching Buddhist monks the words to ‘We Will Rock You’, caring for his elderly stepfather, all manner of spirituality and parenthood.  To the point where a revitalized Dan Reed Network are out gigging again and I’m toying with the idea of taking Mrs 1537 to see them next year.

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But baldness and crack addiction, the former being the most injurious to his career, were light years away when Slam was cut.  The band were very much fans of Van Halen and Prince equally and it shows, the LP is a very pleasant, if a bit lightweight, collection of tunes, occasionally stumbling into excellence and lurching into inanity but mostly making for a pleasant Sunday morning’s listening.  One real standout is ‘Tiger in a Dress’, because all of us insecure, spotty rockers loved a good song about a predatory chick mostly because it would save us the whole nerve-wracking affair of approaching them ourselves if they, you know, just like jumped on you and stuff:

She’s a tiger, tiger in a dress
Takin’ on the bad boys baby, and livin’ on the wild side
She’s a tiger and there’s nowhere to hide

Cruisin’ through the streets, She’s got a hunger
Underneath the sheets, She makes you wish that you were stronger, (a little bit, longer..)

Obviously I can empathise with those chaps who are less gifted in the bedroom arts than myself and who would identify with the last line.  Must be hard being you.  Regardless, it is a really good pop rocker which makes me smile and that’s enough for me.

My theory as to why they didn't make it? his nipples are too hairy.
My theory as to why they didn’t make it? his nipples are too hairy.

Again, I’m a real sucker for soppy sentimental ‘Rainbow Child’, I know I’m being manipulated here but it manages to hit all the right notes to tweak my Emotion Processing Unit (EPU).  It’s a slight confection of a song which shimmers prettily in front of you without any real substance.  It reminds me of the basis of a song that Prince might have knocked up circa Sign O’ The Times, except he would have taken it off somewhere extraordinary musically, Dan Reed Network can’t do that which is fine and the song just gets to be itself.  On a similar tip there’s another great pop track on side 2 called ‘Lover’ full of groove and nice melodies.  The rockers on Slam aren’t as good as the, umm, groovies but a couple aren’t half bad anyway, notably the title track, ‘Make it Easy’ and ‘Doin The Love Thing’, which features some tasty guitar.

They lose 1537 bonus points for the annoying lyric pictograms
They lose 1537 bonus points for the annoying lyric pictograms

Where it all falls down is the fact that this really is an LP forged in the musical vernacular of its’ time, the whole sound of it just oozes late 80’s and MTV; well, MTV before the flannel-shirted hordes stormed the Bastille.  It grates on me occasionally and I was there and have a half decent tolerance for all those synthy tropes.  I can’t imagine future generations, say in the year 2354 when civilisation is just rebuilding itself after the Trumpian Apocalypse stumbling across my copy of Slam and making it the cornerstone of their new culture, it’s too much of its time.  Plus the ballad ‘Stronger Than Steel’ is the most appalling load of cack I can think of right now, the sort of thing you could hear gently emanating from Jon Bon Jovi’s nipsy if you mic-ed it up whilst he slept.

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So despite, or maybe because of, the fact that these destiny’s children never quite ascended the throne that it was assumed was rightfully theirs I have a lot of affection for most of this album.  It reminds me of a time and a place that I look back on nostalgically, mostly and is occasionally very easy on the ears indeed.

Now watch a video of a bald man hiding it behind a headdress:

695 Down (Reed Network).

*well, non Dio one anyway.  Bear witness:

**or is it double-barrelled? Mr Reed-Network?

^there is a subtle, yet entirely unvoiced, ‘just like you, dearest’ on the end of that sentence.  I’m sure of it.


Filed under: 80's, Culture, Dan Reed Network, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Vinyl Tagged: Brion James, Dan Reed, Dan Reed Network, Lover, Make it Easy, Nile Rodgers, Rainbow Child, Slam, Tiger in a Dress

Ballfire

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Funny what you can learn from blogging isn’t it?  I’ve learned all manner of things about architecture, Bulgarian death metal, UFO conspiracies and, after accidentally following several quite lewd blogs*, some things that have really made my hair curl.  BUT, one of the absolute best things I ever found out about my blogging was that Deep Purple Fireball was an absolute must-buy; thanks Scott and Mike!  I always had the album pegged as a poor cousin to Machine Head**, in much the same way as I think Stormbringer is to Burn.  Wrong, it’s way more interesting than that.

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You can’t beat the title and opener for a good exciting start – what sounds like a knackered air-conditioning unit is left for dust by Ian Paice’s drumming, which was robbed wholesale for Motörhead’s ‘Overkill’, until the band join in, in the most exhilarating fashion.  I love ‘Fireball’ it really does sound like the band are having almost more fun than they can handle, playing just as fast as they possibly can.  Towards the end of the song Jon Lord puts in some great stabs of organ and then … and then …. THERE IS THE SINGLE GREATEST BIT OF TAMBOURINING EVER IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THINGS AND HISTORY AND STUFF!  I fucking mean that, fucking sincerely.

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As was common in far off distant days of yore^ the various international versions of Fireball differ from each other, the US and Canadian versions particularly^^ (which were released 2 months before the UK one), including the February 1971 single ‘Strange Kind of Woman’ at the expense of ‘Demon’s Eye’.  Now I like ‘Strange …’ but I can’t help feeling we got by far the better of the deal there.  ‘Demon’s Eye’ starts off with an organ pulse (Ooo-err!) that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Goldfrapp LP and it just gets funkier and lewder from thereon in, totally busting the myth that it was the arrival of Bolin, Hughes and Coverdale that brought the funk thang to the band.  I love every second of this track, everything is just so perfectly judged here, everyone shows off what they can do but nothing is overplayed.  Ian Gillan’s vocals are particularly great on this one too, the bit where he chucks in a little Daltrey-esque stuttering gets me up off my seat every time.

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To be totally fair those may be the best pair of tracks but there are 5 other really good ones too on Fireball too.  I have a real soft spot for the Who-goes-progressive sound of the ‘The Mule’, which has some great flickering guitar bursts from Blackmore and Paice gets to embrace his inner Keith Moon to brilliant effect.  At 8:19 ‘Fools’ is the longest track here and if you ignore a certain lyrical clumsiness, it’s masked by Gillan’s delivery – he sings it with real intent and bite, to match Lord and Blackmore’s gritty attack, although you could lose the soft midsection^* without losing anything much from the song.  I like the basic chug and thrust of ‘No-one Came’ but it just isn’t up to the quality of the others here, although there are some good, amusing lines in it, spoiled a tad by Gillan adopting a bit of a faux American accent and ‘No No No’ is fine, but just not a stand-out in this pretty exalted company.

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Now the joker in the Fireball pack, literally, is ‘Anyone’s Daughter’ which is a completely atypical Purple offering, mostly about Gillan’s purple offering.  It sounds like the band never have before or since (to my knowledge) at least, it is a straight-up jokey tale of dodging dads and doing the do played at a straight shuffle speed.  It is a real little oddity, especially hearing Gillan singing in a conversational way, a bit like a Chiswick Dylan; more ballfire than fireball.  I’m torn between quite liking and hating this one, occasionally it makes me just want to turn the record over, but sometimes, just sometimes it’s fine.

A farmer looking for Ian Gillan, yesterday.
A farmer looking for Ian Gillan, yesterday.

I think this is really essential Deep Purple, they’re having fun on Fireball playing with who they could be and sound like in the future before screwing the lid down, brilliantly, with Machine Head.

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Everything was sepia back in 1971. Fact.
Everything was sepia back in 1971. Fact.

703 Down.

PS:  After Mike and Scott mercilessly bullied me into  buying Fireball I was lucky enough to pick up a nearly mint copy on eBay for very little cash indeed, like myself, it is a beautifully preserved specimen with almost no cover wear and a great spine.  True dat.

PPS: Has anyone else noticed that WP seems to have changed so that media files, embedded video/Spotify in my case, end up as the featured picture in reader? which is why I haven’t embedded any for this.

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*for the last three years.

**which followed it only 8 months later.  Mental.

^’Yore’ can be precisely and scientifically defined as, and I quote from a recent article in New Scientist here, ‘roughly December 1964 through to May 1973, and shit’.

^^possibly because, and I will have to check my facts here, Fireball was released when they were still British colonies; like, totally totally long ago.

^*I’ve been trying to lose mine for years.

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Filed under: Culture, Deep Purple, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: Deep Purple, Demon's Eye, Fireball, Harvest, Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Jon Lord, Lego, Richie Blackmore, The Mule

The Goat In The Machine

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  • Goat Live If You want It
  • Udder The Bridge
  • If You Want Blood, You Goat It
  • Goat To Get You Into My Life
  • Baby, Please Don’t Goat
  • Kid
  • Janie’s Goat Gun
  • Billy’s Goat Gun
  • The Future’s So Bright, My Goat Wears Shades
  • Goat Your Rocks off

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I had a lot of fun playing with titles for this post* but particularly so today writing about Goat.  Nope, I don’t mean your eccentric Swedish types with a weird schtick about being a lost African tribe, although I do like ’em, I’m talking about the Brighton based UK combo from the very early 90s.  They released a mini-LP called As You Like and a full LP called Medication Time that I bought on cassette mostly because I liked the cover – I’ve always been a sucker for marble or tile effect covers.

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Medication Time had one really good track, ‘Lying In The Flowers’, on it; their initial effort As You Like didn’t.  I’ve listened to this 1990 LP four times in the last few days and I struggle to remember much about it at all.  It’s cursed with sounds that were very 1990 but not very 2016, which possibly smacks of them trying too hard, in a pinch they sound a little like The Cult doing funk rock, which correct me if I’m wrong, is not a desirable thing.  The very best bits of As You Like are the shiny bits on the cover, I only realised yesterday that the pattern on the cover was the band’s name repeated over and over and the track ‘Don’t Cry’, which is a bit meaner and earthier than the rest and a lot better as a result.

Love this!
Love this!

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From their second LP I bought the single Good Times twice.  Well, once was a bit of a rubbish shaped picture disc and once was a 12″ with a metal plaque and a newsletter.  The later is rather fun actually, the plaque a bit on the pointless side and the music much better.  ‘Good Times’ is a good rocker with a good tune, hamstrung by production that sounds a little treble-y to my ears.  The B-side on both my versions is a stonking cover of the Stooges TV Eye, which captures the white-out intensity of the original and a live version of a track from As You Like called ‘Fallen Over You’, which is more ragged and energetic.

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Goat were very much of their time and I would happily pick up a vinyl copy of Medication Time if I saw one, but I can’t see myself coming back this way for a bit.  I’ve just goat a feeling.

711 Down.

PS: The usual 1537 caveat applies, this is far better music than I have ever put out – I’m just a dweeb with a keyboard, these guys tried – they win.

*it’s often my favourite part of writing a post anyway.


Filed under: Brit rock, Culture, Goat, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: As You LIke, beggar's banquet Records, Goat, Good Times, Medication Time, Shaped picture disc, TV Eye

The Basement Traipse

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Gorgon-solar, anyone? here is the self-proclaimed ‘cosmic rock’ of Medusa:

150 gram vinyl slab of infinite blackness? Psychedelic sorcerer mind fuck? Pressed from the crushed bones of ancient dinosaurs? Black velvet album jacket shaved from a centaur’s scrotum? Deal me in MF, deal me in.

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Medusa First Step Beyond, is the album that never was.  Oh yes, I’m a bad gnomic gnome tonight!  Recorded in 4-track in the drummer’s basement in 1975 the tapes were left to moulder when the proprietor of their record label apparently vanished after a bad trip and the band split after not making any progress.  Left to moulder that is, until the Numero Group* sniffed them out, possibly using a battalion of specially trained kobolds to do so and put First Step Beyond out in 2013.

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Did I just say ‘put out’, whilst technically correct ‘put out’ doesn’t really do justice to the love and care that has been lavished on this release.  First up, the LP sleeve is a gatefold covered in the finest faux black velvet imaginable; it’s alarmingly tactile, I found myself absent-mindedly stroking it against the side of my face last night.  Secondly, the band’s evil pentagram/goat head/gorgon logo has been gloriously burnished onto the front of the LP in gold leaf of purest gold and, umm, red leaf of purest red.  Thirdly, I love the gatefold pictures and the dinky little lyric sheet replete with gold gothic script that is only just decipherable.

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Wait, there’s music on First Step Beyond too! Is there no end to the gimmicks Numero Group are prepared to throw at feeble-minded consumer dolts like me?

Despite sounding at times like it was recorded on a 4-track in a basement in 1975** at its best First Step Beyond just flies.  The track I go back to most often is the seriously fast instrumental ‘Transient Amplitude’, this is great unpolished space rocking with some excellent guitaring courtesy of Gary Brown and drumming from Lee Tauber.  ‘Transient Amplitude’ really is the sound of a band enjoying themselves and letting rip, really letting rip that is.  I find it difficult to resist ‘Temptress’, well I would wouldn’t I? all manner of gentle strumming, lustful pining and clunky lyrics abound: cue ‘desire/fire’ and ‘breeze/knees’ rhyme scheme.  It’s rather charming in an Iron Butterfly kind of way.

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No doubt tokin’ and Tolkein inspired ‘Black Wizard’ is at once amusing period piece and stonking bowl of stoner goodness, I’m very fond of the guitar squalls and the overall heavy groove of the track and possibly I can relate to the wizard because just like him, ‘my power is infinite, my kingdoms are sprawled’.  ‘Black Wizard’ incidentally featured on the mighty, mighty, mighty compilation Warfaring Strangers: The Darkscorch Canticles, LP and swords and sorcery board game, which was my introduction to Medusa.

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Another noteworthy jam^ is opener ‘Strangulation’ which knocks on Black Sabbath’s front door and asks to borrow a cup of doom, albeit with some opinion-polarizing strange high-pitched ‘uh-uh, ah-ah-ahhh!’ vocalisations from singer Pete Basaraba – I put this on last night and Mrs 1537 popped her head around the door to ask what the hell I was playing, ‘It’s Medusa a forgotten band from 1975’ I offered, ‘I can bloody see why’ the lady snorted.  Well, I like it – so there!

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First Step Beyond has a few clunkers and clinkers amongst its ranks though too, although I rather suspect that with better recording and production some of this would have been ironed out rather effectively.  You can hear the promise in ‘Unknown Fear’, its different sections and great discordant intro and the sped-up race to the climax is still darned good, but you just wonder what Martin Birch or Roger Glover could have done with the raw materials on show here.  I know I’ve said it before but hard rock/metal is so dependent on good production and it’s usually that which hobbles a lot of smaller bands.  Mind you on the other hand ‘Feelings of Indifference’, despite having a slightly incongruous country tone, just isn’t very good.

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The worry when picking up a carefully curated artefact like First Step Beyond is that you end up buying a nice object which turns out to be little more than a historico-cultural curiosity, that’s not good enough for me; I want LPs to enjoy listening to^*.  Medusa deliver the goods here, I am pleased to say.  Since a lot of the music I like today tries to sound like it was recorded in a primitive basement set up in 1975, there’s a lot to be said for hearing the real thing.

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712 Down.

PS:  It was nice to follow the story of Medusa reforming 40 years on, although sadly not in time for the late Kim Gaudabiec (whom First Step Beyond is dedicated to in memoriam), especially since two of them are now married – Donna Fields originally wrote a lot of the tracks and named the band too before leaving.

*fellow WordPressers and very possibly my fave reissue label out there, if I was a gazillionaire I would collect everything they have ever put out.

**there’ll be a perfectly logical explanation for that I’m sure.

^as I believe the kids call it.

^*although ones I can stroke lingeringly and pleasurably against the side of my face come close.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: Centaur scrotum, First Step Beyond, Hard Rock, Medusa, Temptress, The NUmero Group, Warfaring Strangers: The Darkscorch Canticles

Hammy Horror

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As the UK’s second-best writer once wrote in Sonnet 43:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Well, lets have a go, eh Shakespeare?

  1. The album was recorded entirely in Transylvania County, NC.
  2. An LP cover featuring no fewer than 9 nipples and 4 lady gardens.
  3. A husband and wife band, I always like those.
  4. They added synths to their rock because they live in the town next to the one Bob Moog did.
  5. You could buy a limited edition version which came with a hand-crafted Ouija board.
  6. They invent new verbs ‘Just ahead my adversary aggressing rapidly toward me’**.
  7. Chief ghoul, Anders Manga, always wears a top hat – that always works for me.
  8. Vinyl produced in Satan’s favourite colour, lilac.
  9. Lyrics evoking death, vampirism, death, dying gladiators, death, sexually insatiable Roman empresses*, death, being burned at the stake, death and the sensual joy of eating really thick toast slathered in butter death.

Welcome to the underdome, lair of the rather silly, but rather excellent Bloody Hammers and their 2016 LP Lovely Sort of Death.  I would have lived and died without ever hearing them if it wasn’t for Victim of the Fury, so thank you sir.  If truth be told I was born a sucker for this band, I have no resistance at all to their sound – synthy goth rock with a velveteen teen-scene sheen, daddio.  Deal me in.

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Raising the coffin lid is ‘Bloodletting on the Kiss’, which really wasn’t what I expected.  It swanks in sporting a cape formed of darkest Sisters of Mercy keyboard FX circa-Floodland and prowls around being all stylish and vampiric, I absolutely love it for being all overly dramatic and restrained, even the shouty bits.  Moogy moody.  All of which really wasn’t the towering guitar assault I was expecting, especially with the (Roky Erickson inspired) band name Bloody Hammers.  Obviously it gets 1537 bonus points for the boobs in the video:

(at 4:43 exactly, if you’re a knocker fan in a rush)

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Also confounding my preconceived perceptions of Lovely Sort of Death is the brilliant ‘Lights Come Alive’, which rather unusually borrows the kind of grandeur and plateaus I associate with the 80s likes of Simple Minds and their earnest ilk; bands just don’t really go that windswept winsome way very much anymore.  But of course what it serves up is that most quintessentially gothic and, tellingly, that most quintessentially teenage opiate, drama.  I’ve always loved a good bit of drama in a track, hell, Queen got me into all this after all.  Surely though ‘The Reaper Comes’ will be a blast of icy guitar rock-outery? no, as it happens we get a slow-building track that despite the title is far more Pink (Floyd) than black.  Damn you Death and the Fairlight you rode in on!

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You want drama, well after ‘Messalina’s rocking out we hit my fave track on the LP ‘Infinite Gaze to the Sun’, about a Roman gladiator’s last minutes alive, it really is as hammy and glorious as all that implies, in addition to rocking out like a bastard undertaker on a spree.  I’ve fallen in love with this track, you know exactly where the choruses are building to and precisely when the pay off will come and it’s performed so well that none of that matters more than a mote on the eye socket of a skull.  Plus there aren’t enough songs about gladiators in my view.

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Add in a stoner doom track about ether called, umm, ‘Ether’ (the weakest link on Lovely Sort of Death despite going for a Sabotage vibe) and a great chugging track about burning witches ‘Stoke the Fire’, the Gary Numan gone (not very good) prog of ‘Shadow Out of Time’, the pure Orange Goblin-esque rock out of ‘Astral Traveller’ and the bass-synth-tastic ‘Catastrophe’  – and that’s your LP dead and done.

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Lovely Sort of Death isn’t flawless as I’ve mentioned and I’m torn between respecting the fact that Bloody Hammers play it all totally straight without any discernible humour creeping into the coffin, or mocking them for the pretension of it.  On the other hand, that is really one of the things I like best about gothic music, the fact that to make it you do need to just forget about looking damned silly, set the pretension gauge up to 11 and really go for it.  But, let’s face it, they look like a Rob Zombie reimagining of The Munsters which is why I do find the whole thing really rather silly and that does add to the layers of enjoyment of it for me.

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Oh and that Shakespeare guy and his Sonnet 43-y thing? seems like he did know his darkwave goth rock after all:

I shall but love thee better after death.

715 Down.

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PS: As I bought a super limited edition of 300 copies version of Lovely Kind of Death, I also got a bonus CD of 4 additional tracks – which I literally found again rattling around inside the LP just now, the highlight is the monstrous downtuned ‘Halloween’ (who’d have guessed they liked it?) which is great.  ‘At Dawn They Sleep’ switches tracks almost into KMFDM territory and has made it onto my exercise mix^^, whereas ‘The Shrine’ and ‘Altar of Fear’ are much less interesting offcuts.

Bonus disc boobs
Bonus disc boobs

*if I remember my classics education properly, Pliny tells us that she had 25 partners in 24 hours in an endurance competition with a prostitute (which she won); history was silent on whether this led to cystitis.  It is also very probably a load of unpleasant sexist propaganda, cooked up over nothing^.

**Bye love, I’m just off to aggress the dog around the park, be back in a bit.

^take that Pliny! 1537: Fighting for Today’s Issues.

^^called ‘Jog piggy! Jog!!’, future biographers.

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Filed under: Bloody Hammers, Culture, Goth, Hard Rock, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: Anders Manga, Bloodletting, Bloody Hammers, Boobs & Lady gardens, Darkwave, Goth, Lilac Vinyl, Lovely Sort of Death, Munsters, Pliny, Roky Erickson, Sahakespeare Sonnet 43, Vampires

The Global Pants 11

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January eh? apart from my birthday at the end of it, what a pants month.

In fact, given the events of Friday, January has gone globally pants; although Saturday’s huge marches were a heartening sight.  But there again, I was bound to say that, what with me being a 100% pinko liberal snowflake scum and all, running around using ‘facts’* and cheating by using my memory to ‘remember’ contradictory statements.  Damnit, it’s about time that lyin’, cheatin’ mainstream media gave me a job.  Still, I firmly predict that the next four years will yield a goodly amount of very angry music, which can only be a good thing.

Right, that’s world affairs and the Julian calendar** dealt with, what else do I do here? oh yes, records.  So far I’ve bought 11 of them, sort of accidentally to cheer myself up.  Well, 11 of them and a couple of box sets that I have bought solely to leave unopened and make money on in the dim distant future^.  I need to slow down a bit, but here they are:

Ltd edition cuddly toy version
Ltd edition cuddly toy version

Discharge Why

Apocalyptic collection of 1981 EPs, the original 10 tracks now bulked up by 24 bonus tracks (24!!!), all of which are great.  You can hear them evolve from sped-up punk into a sound of their own ready to deliver UK punk’s best ever debut LP the next year, which went a sizable way towards creating thrash metal years later.  My own particular favourites are ‘Ain’t No Feeble Bastard’ and ‘Why’.  Living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud never sounded as raucous and chilling again.

Franck Vigroux & Matthew Bourne Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited

I was Australianed into buying this LP and it is great, exactly what it says in the title, Kraftwerk’s achingly emotional album revisited and reinterpreted in a beautifully sympathetic and instinctive fashion by two rather fabulous artists.  Has already supported me during several mournful commutes.

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Rory Gallagher Irish Tour ’74

My Christmas present from my folks, this is the 3LP version of this seminal^ blues rock release.  It’s a rather beautiful, tastefully suped-up reissue but that’s not really the point.  The point is the way Gallagher plays the living hell out of everything in sight, the performance is electrifying – particularly so when you read about the circumstances of their recording.  I’ve got a lot to get into here.

Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard Y Proffwyd Dwyll

What’s in a name? surely Welsh female-fronted doom would sound as sweet by any other name? they’re from about 20 miles away, they write in Welsh and are on close repeat for me at the moment.  Plus that name rocks very bigly indeed.

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The Cavemen Born To Hate

They’re from New Zealand, they make primeval garage punk, their drummer wears a Motorhead T-shirt on the front cover, they’re on the ever-reliable Dirty water Records and they have songs called ‘I Hope They Drop The Bomb On Me’ and ‘Satan Is Her Name’.  You can see why I had to buy it.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Tender Prey

I only need one more now to complete my set.  Lots of greatness on this LP, not that I’ve actually got around to playing the thing yet! The bits I already know are wonderful though.

I also popped into the record stall at my dad’s antique’s centre accidentally on Saturday, oops.

Click to view slideshow.
  • Gillan Futureshock – Complete with groovy 16 page booklet.  My word, they weren’t very glamorous.
  • Split Enz True Colours.  Perfect post-punk pop, a real revelation for me.  I only wish someone had told me about them before^^.
  • Cheetah Rock & Roll Women – Vanda & Young produced double sister-fronted Aussie rock from 1981.  It’s not very sophisticated, but neither am I.
  • Stars on Thrash – 1988 thrash metal compilation.  At last I now own some Pestilence, Znowhite and Atrophy tracks.
  • Tesla The Great Radio Controversy – Scratched like someone sheltered behind it during a knife fight but it plays perfectly – that’s how tough these guys were.

Anyway, I need to stop yakking and start listenin’ and reviewin’ some actual music stuff.

728 Down (hill, still).

PS. I think I fancy the lady who looks like Joe Perry more than the lady who looks like Michael Monroe.

*soon to be made illegal in the US, I understand.

**damn them forever for getting rid of the month of Mercedonius!  If only that meddling Pope Gregory XIII had looked to his own business more.

^or to simply use as barter materials for canned food and crossbow bolts, or possibly just use them for fuel, if Trumpism really does hasten the end of civilised society.

^Yukk!

^^Mrs 1537 told me ‘Oh, I used to love that album when I was 12’.  I thought marriage vows dealt with disclosure of information.


Filed under: Culture, Hard Rock, Music, Obsessive behaviour, Record collecting, Self-indulgent nonsense, Vinyl Tagged: 2017, Cheetah Rock & Roll Women, Discharge, Facts, Inaugaration, Mercedonius, Nick Cave & The Bad seeds, Record collecting, Rory Gallagher, Stars on Thrash, Tesla, The Julian Calendar

Mutant Sinatra Syndrome

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I’m a product of America
From the morgue to the prisons
Cold metal, when I start my band
Cold metal, in my garbage can
Cold metal, gets in my blood
And my attitude

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I do like an album with a cracking lead off track and ‘Cold Metal’ on Iggy Pop Instinct really fits the bill, I just wish I’d heard it back when it was released in 1988, rather than twenty years later when I picked it up on a day when I couldn’t find anything I wanted more in the shop.  I remember reading about it in one of the sacred texts of 1537-ism Kerrang!’s 100 Best Metal LPs (1989), it was #69*.

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Instinct was the rock follow-up to Iggy’s highly improbable pop comeback LP Blah-Blah-Blah, Bowie contributions were out, the gnarly, shaggy figure of Steve Jones was in – I remember Iggy Pop enthusing about his hands in an interview at the time, ‘He has a pugilist’s hands.  Robert Mitchum hands’**.  Jones really does bring the rock too, playing an uncomplicated hard riffing style on Instinct that he carried on over to the next year’s solo album, the mighty, Fire & Gasoline.

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You want Iggy Hard Rock, rather than Pop? just check out the barreling ‘Cold Metal’ and the second side star ‘Tuff Baby’.  Both raucous, both as shallow as they come, both built on great riffs and both guarantee you a great time, ‘…Metal’ has the edge for me it’s a better tune and a slightly alternative edge.  But don’t take my word for it, check it out here – incidentally you get to see something else I’ve always liked about Iggy on this clip, just how unmacho he is, I’ve seen him a couple of times now and there’s something quite feminine about the way he moves:

The video was directed by the mighty Sam Raimi by the way.

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Bill Laswell was far too clever a producer to put his name to anything too one-dimensional and there is a fair bit of light and shade on Instinct; ‘High on You’ being a very good case in point.  Iggy almost croons the verses of this tunefully worshipful rocker – the irony being of course that Mr Pop was decidedly straight edge at the time.  In Gimme Danger by Joe Laswell, Bill Laswell is quoted, very perceptively indeed, as saying:

Iggy had a quality in his voice that wasn’t raw like a punk singer, that was a sort of mutant Frank Sinatra.  He definitely had that possibility with the low end; down at the low end of his voice … I think one day he will do ballads and things where he can really use his voice.

The best example of this and sometimes my favourite track on Instinct is ‘Lowdown’, where the man hits the mutant Sinatra overdrive to deliver a heartfelt paean to independence over a good rattling backing track.  And what does the once most dangerous man in music want?

Take that happy banner off the wall
I don’t need to see no smiling face
All I really want’s a cup of tea
To feel a warmth inside of me

I find that rather a sweet sentiment and ‘Lowdown’ is at once a signpost back to The Idiot and forward to the tone of Post Pop Depression.  Plus it has an elegiac guitar solo and you can never have enough elegiac guitar solos, as my grandmother always used to say.

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Okay so there are a couple of comparatively average tracks here, but the standard is high enough that they’re fine – they sound very redolent of a time and place for me.  Steve Jones only played a smattering of gigs with Iggy as he put together a really kick-ass band featuring Andy McCoy and UK Subs bassist Alvin Gibbs for the tour, but he really is all over this album.  If you’ve got a hard beating hard rock heart at all in your body you’ll find a few somethings to love here.  Besides, who could ever resist a ‘smile/vile/cars/Mars’ rhyming scheme, never me.

I love your hair
Your pearly smile
Your icing scan
Society’s vile
Insect cars
Horny men from Mars
I love you, tuff baby
I love you, tuff baby

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730 Down.

*which just shows how powerfully distorting the recency effect can be which is why I try not to review recent stuff too soon.

**no idea how or why this has stuck with me for 29 years.


Filed under: 80's, Culture, Hard Rock, Iggy Pop, Music, Punk, Record collecting, Vinyl Tagged: A&M Records, Andy McCoy, Bill Laswell, Cold Metal, High on You, Iggy Pop, Instinct, Sam Raimi, Steve Jones

Brunette Blondie

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You really do know how to strut that stuff
You really do know how to act tough
Your body’s just like a centerfold
A fantasy, anyone would want to hold

Another day, another song about me, please 80’s Pat Benatar, leave me alone – I’m taken.  Don’t worry there are plenty more 45 year-old bald, married Welshmen in the sea.  Come on calm down, what do you say to that?

With looks that kill and a mind that’s twisted
I don’t know why I can’t resist it
I tell myself, look the other way
When you want me to, I, I always stay

Pat! Now come on, don’t make me cross here; I’ve told you I’m not interested and I am asking you to respect that.  Who are you calling twisted anyway? You’re the one who’s turned up in my front garden dressed entirely in spandex, wearing a headband and swathed in dry ice and those blue lights that are found only in early 80’s music videos.  I’m going to have to ask you to leave my property now, you’ll wake the chickens.

You play with desire like it was a toy
How much affection can you destroy?
You wrap my heart around your little finger
Sex, sex, sex as a weapon

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We here at the Health and Safety department of 1537 would like to reassure all readers that the safety catch on my weapon will remain fully engaged at all times during this review of Pat Benatar Best Shots, her greatest hits comp from 1987.  Maybe only just though.

Blame Wales.  I picked Best Shots up a couple of years ago after my kids and I had an absolute ball singing along to ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’ about ten times in a row until we were word perfect on a long nighttime car journey down to West Wales, which in turn was down to it scoring my favourite scene in the film Rock of Ages with Catherine Zeta-Jones’ brilliant dance sequence – Wales again.  It is just a perfect car rocker too, great chorus, top-notch gritty silk vocals and as long as you don’t think too long and hard about the lyrics, about as great as AM rock gets; pretty damn great as it happens.

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We vinyl buffoons get 12 Best Shots here* and although my attention wanders a little during ‘Treat Me Right’ and ‘You Better Run’ it is all great stuff.  Everything polished and gleaming, flawless production (check the precision of ‘Invincible’), every note shiny, burnished and new, no chorus knowingly undersung.  What stops it all from being too sterile and soulless is Pat’s** vocals, they bring the human touch perfectly – a little gruffness, a little grit in the oyster, as well as the occasional pyrotechnics you expect from someone who almost trained as a classical singer.  Interestingly Best Shots avoids sounding too dated as a lot of the more irritating 80’s tropes are missing, you still need to crank the bass setting up though to balance the sound.

Real roses these, not photo-shopped nonsense
Real roses these, not photo-shopped nonsense

Above all this is a pop album dressed in a rock wolf’s clothes and it really is none the worse for that, good catchy tunes prevail.  Just crank up ‘Fire & Ice’ to hear yet another tale of poor Pat trying to resist the blandishments of yet another ladies’ man, not me this time I promise, selling every syllable as though her life depends upon it; in certain circumstances I’d take to the hills faced with this, but here it just works.  Especially when you hit me with a pure joy like ‘Heartbreaker’ too, which I’ve always thought of as the first cousin of Heart’s ‘Barracuda’, pop rock like this just gives you sunshine no matter the season.

Pat and I in happier times
Pat and I in happier times

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One of Best Shots highlights for me was ‘We Live For Love’ which, rather thrillingly, sounds like a rockier brunette Blondie, Benatar has that Debbie Harry breathy upper register trick down, umm, pat.  It’s such a great track, the one real bit of quirkiness on the album before we slam back into the pleasurably steamrollering ‘Sex As A Weapon’, it is as great as it is daft, which will do me just fine^.

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I think of myself as a fairly unshakable, streetwise sort of soul but I have to say that tonight I was utterly sideswiped by something that I really wasn’t expecting.  During my 7 weeks of extensive research that I put into every review I write*^ I hadn’t yet checked out the video to ‘Love is a Battlefield’ until now.  Oh. My.  Please share my experience:

First off, I have to say I do like videos that the director considered were important enough to interpolate their sound effects and lines of dialogue over the music; possibly on the grounds that theirs was the true art and the music a bit of an inconvenience.

Anyhoo, small town Pat has a row with her parents, she takes out on the Greyhound for some urban cesspool of sin where folk aren’t very friendly.  She eventually walks into a nightclub where she, in common with the other female lady girls there, dresses like a sexed-up Victorian chimney sweep whose skirt has been savaged by an overly-amorous Doberman Pinscher; I have shrewd suspicions that the ladies at the club may be selling a good time on the side.  Her father, miles away looks pensive.  Meanwhile she dances in an hilariously unenthusiastic manner with a client – if that is any indication of her job skills for the more private elements of her employment then she can expect to be, umm, laid off soon.  Pat writes to her younger brother, possibly expressing her disappointment at her recent annual appraisal at work.  Then, the baddie (we can tell he is one as he has a gold tooth and looks a bit ethnic) foists some unwanted attention on a co-worker.

But don’t worry lady of dubious virtue, Pat is here!  She seems to have formed an impromptu association of Strippers, Ho’s and Amalgamated Trades and she and the rest of the membership surround him and … how do they drive off this putative sex attacker? Yes, of course! They vigorously shake their chesticles at him!  Trust me, I shit you not, it’s located at about 3:22.  The guy’s expression at 4:35 pretty much mirrored my own after watching the whole video.  Phew! They sure don’t make ’em like this any more.

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That’s all I got Best Shots; I gave it mine and have now reholstered my weapon.

739 Down.

PS: I almost forgot to mention whilst I really enjoy this album, it is a wretched example of mid to late 80’s can’t-be-arsed-with-LPs-ism from the record company.  No sleeve notes, vinyl so thin it’s almost see through, no band/player credits, rotten typical 80’s design layout on the back cover and a bit of a quiet sound.  Ha, Chrysalis execs from 1987 – we vinyl buyers will one day (almost, sort of) rule the world! Well, rule the 7% who actually pay anything for music these days.

PPS:  I was inspired to visit Best Shots by 2loud2oldmusic’s recent Pat Post.  Thank you.

*CD had 15 but the vinyl is the better, less diluted deal, the European version is far better sequenced than the US version too.

**I figure we’re on first name terms now.

^I have a fine expressive interpretative dance routine worked out for the song too.  Unfortunately, as I very unselfishly don’t want to break the internet I shan’t be putting it on YouTube any time soon.  #SelflessDancer.

*^I don’t just bang this scheisse out in 30 minutes after staggering home from the pub before I fall unconscious, no I have a team of graduate researchers and Lego technicians operating around the clock burnishing this nonsense until it gleams as faultless and snugly-spandexed as ‘Shadows of the Night’.  True story.


Filed under: 80's, AOR, Culture, Music, Pat Benatar, Record collecting, Rock, Vinyl Tagged: 1987, AOR, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Debbie Harry, Love is a Battlefield, Pat Benatar, Pat Benatar Best Shots, Sex As A Weapon, Soft Rock, We Live For Love
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