I was a high school loser, never made it with a lady
'Til the boys told me something I missed
Then I took a record added Lego to give some flavour
So I gave her just a little kiss, like this

NB: Lyrics may not quite be 100% accurate, but hey.

Climb into some stack heels, tie a silk scarf around your wrist, get laid twice, take 8 years worth of drugs over a single weekend and set the DeLorean for 1975. There can only be one soundtrack, Aerosmith Toys In The Attic.

Unlike your humble reviewer Toys In The Attic gives you 37 minutes of sleazy good times, guaranteed every time. The band’s first written-to-order LP, as opposed to just-recording-what-we-were-playing-out-live, it is still Aerosmith’s best seller and by some as yet unrediscovered alchemy still sounds infinitely better in a car. Hey, I’m Aerosmitten.

Toys In The Attic is a funny, funky little critter, when you take it apart you realise that there it is more than the sum of its parts, there are some forgettable tunes here that sound great in context, but only then, mixed in with some real classics. Take a bow Jack Douglas, the production is absolutely key to this.

The title track slams right out of the gate and is definitely definitively defiantly one of the band’s very best rattle n’ rollers. I just love how fast the band bash this one out and the refrain of ‘Toys, toys, toys’ just does it for me.

It’s kinda typical Toys In The Attic that we lose momentum by hitting my least favourite track on the LP, ‘Uncle Salty’ a decidedly unsympathetic tale of abuse and, I’m guessing, prostitution. The only saving grace is the Beatles-y grace of the ‘sunny day outside my window’ hook, but its not enough for me.

The swagger and strut of ‘Adam’s Apple’ gets things back into the groove again, I bloody love the guitaring on this beastie but in truth it’s far more a good sound, than a good song. Next up is ‘Walk This Way’, which you may have heard of … Aerosmith’s take on the Meters and virginity; I love it but the Run DMC version is even better, there I said it. That jerkoid rhythm is amazing.

An excellent, weirdly faithful, cover of Bull Moose Jackson’s ‘Big Ten Inch Record’ has always been another highlight for me. It’s an entendre so steadfastly single in nature that even AC/DC would have blushed at it. I love how Tyler bemoans the fact that NOBODY believes that he sings ‘cept on my big ten inch record’ instead of ‘suck on my big ten inch record’; I still don’t.

The first time I heard ‘Sweet Emotion’ it absolutely knocked me aslant, it still does. Hell it even soundtracks the opening credits of my favourite film. It really doesn’t sound like anything else then, or now – it’s sleazy, slinky, woozily dreamy, compelling and utterly, deliciously, completely corrupt. I only learned where the line about ‘the rabbit done died’ came from yesterday*, although most of this songs Tylerian word salad apparently comes from feuding band wives. Not only is ‘Sweet Emotion’ my second favourite Aerosong ever it is a great bridge into the subterranean soundscape of Rocks, one of the best LPs ever made by any fucker, ever**.

I’ve always enjoyed the spritely ‘No More, No More’, which I found myself singing quietly to myself on the station platform the other day^. I love the opening lines ‘Blood stains the ivories on my daddy’s baby grand / Ain’t seen the daylight since we started this band’. The one about jailbait has aged less well … this is a much lesser track but such a good tune, talented bunnies, this lot. I love how well Tyler sells the lyrics to this one.

The heavy plod nod of ‘Round And Round’ does provide some ersatz Zep kicks, but is missing a light dusting of magical sparkle powder, unlike the band at the time. I have a bit of a soft spot for the vastly over-egged, closing ballad ‘You See Me Crying’ its kinda raw and a bit incompetent in places that makes it infinitely more human and fallible than the forty million Aeroballads that were following it down the track. There’s a slight Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper quality to the excellent sound and orchestration on this one. I love the story that Steven Tyler, having heard it one day told the band that they should cover it, because chemicals; ‘It’s us, fuckhead!’ Joe Perry told him.

Like so many of my fave LP’s from my fave era Toys In The Attic clocks in at an almost perfect sub-40 minutes^^. It is just the perfect timing for a rock LP. I don’t find myself playing it as often as I should do, despite the smattering of classics and overall great sound it has, but it is a really good album and not just the gateway drug for Rocks. My bad, I keep hearing about them toys in the attic and I just want to delve deeper down into those rats in the cellar.

If you’re not too confused and dazed by now and your silk scarves don’t get in the way, you really do need to play Toys In The Attic right now.

So I took a big chance at the high school dance
With a missy who was ready to Lego
Wasn't me she was foolin'
'Cause she knew what she was doin'
And she loved me 'til I yelled 'let go'

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PS: The perfect marriage of sound and good times (mostly):

*pregnancy test, apparently.

**in the whole fucking history of fuck. More tea vicar?

^hence this drivel you are currently wading through.

^^37:08 to be precise.

Press play, your ears will thank you for it:

If I could magically learn one guitar riff perfectly, without all that dreadfully unbecoming practice and bleeding fingers jazz, then it would be ‘Breadfan’ by Budgie. I just love how nonchalant Tony Bourge is in this clip, like it was absolutely no big deal and he could actually reel off this riff whilst doing chores around the house, or piloting a plane. Respect.

Never Turn Your Back On A Friend by Budgie turns 50 this year, unlike me who has just turned 51; sadly honesty compels me to say that the LP has aged better than I have*, just.

Budgie’s third LP was recorded at that font of all that is great and good in this world, Rockfield Studios. It is a jump in quality from its predecessor Squawk, which was produced by Rodger Bain. Never Turn Your Back On A Friend, sage advice by the way, is one of those all too rare instances where everything just aligned and the quality of the songs, the performances and the (self) production is absolutely spot-on. It is also the LP where the band’s lyrical quirkiness rings most intriguingly true.

Thanks to a certain Danish chap’s covers band Never Turn Your Back** kicks down the doors with Budgie’s best known song, ‘Breadfan’. What a tremendous way to open an LP too. As someone who’s parents often referred to money as ‘bread’, or to ‘bread heads’ this was the song I was waiting all my life for.

Folks out there call it the first speed metal track, it isn’t but it is definitely an early staging post en route. That fast stuttering riff is just supreme and you should hear the speed they played it live on occasion. I love how sparing the trio’s instrumentation was and yet how full the sound is, in addition to the dynamic shifts in the track. When that riff kicks back in after the lull … I am complete.

Their gonzo cover of Joe Williamson’s ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ is another cracker, up there with AC/DC’s cover two years later, in fact. It is great showcase for Burke Shelley’s bass playing too, if not his vocals which are slightly strangulated on this one.

Then Never Turn Your Back pitches us unexpectedly into the acoustic balladry of ‘You Know I’ll Always Love You’, it manages that rarest of things for a ballad, to sound heartfelt, as opposed to rote. Then Budgie manage that second rarest of things for a ballad, it doesn’t overstay its welcome; 2:12 and gone.

The stalking riff of ‘You’re The Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk’ is prefigured by two minutes of phased drums from Ray Phillips, a touch unnecessarily in my book. Shelley comes over all Robert Plant on this one, to great affect. This is pure progressive blues, with sections and movements and a genius bit of guitar linkage that Iron Maiden stole years later. Again, it barely needs saying but Tony Bourge … wow.

‘In The Grip Of A Tyre Fitter’s Hand’ is even better, it struts with real intent and roll. As a clever song about the pressures of work and life, it can’t be beaten. Phillips’ drumming is just insanely good on this track in particular, I really like his style because it is pretty sparse, not a hit wasted anywhere.

I will skip ‘Riding My Nightmare’ as I can’t think of anything much positive to say about it. Never Turn Your Back climaxes with the epic sweep to end all epic sweeps of ‘Parents’^. At just over 10 minutes long, it feels too short to me every time I play it. This really is Budgie’s masterpiece, all three chaps absolutely play out of their skins here and Shelley’s vocals are quite strikingly non-gendered, several times recently I have thought it would sound brilliant covered by a female singer. Weirdly, despite the lyrics (‘Mind your manners, or you’re dead’ is amongst the parental advice given) it has the epic quality of some alternate reality bond theme^^.

There are several wonderful recurring passages of sweeping melodic slightly melancholic guitar playing by Bourge, where he somehow seems to rain down the notes upon us. The production is absolutely remarkable here too, especially as it was by the band themselves for the first time. Don’t get me started on the seagull noises either, masterful.

Budgie were really something else – strikingly idiosyncratic, wry, uncompromising in their artistic vision and impossible to pigeonhole. They were, of course, doomed precisely by all their virtues never to make it big.

Never Turn Your Back is my favourite iteration of theirs, the last LP that Ray Phillips played on too. It is surely no coincidence that Never Turn Your Back supplies 5/9 of the tracks on The Best Of Budgie. This is a wonderful snapshot of how untethered and odd rock could be back in the early 70’s, no following in the furrows of various genres for Budgie as they swooped across the fields of heavy metal, prog and other as-yet-undefined mad shite.

Buy this album.

My copy of Never Turn Your Back is a 2014 reissue and I have to say it has been done superbly well, cut with great sound.

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*honesty is right up there with modesty in any list of 5 things I am perfect at.

**as it will henceforth be called in order to save pixels.

^hypocrite alert! I didn’t like this one much when I reviewed The Best Of Budgie. I’m better now.

^^maybe a nouvelle vague influenced one where Bond has a few too many drinks, gets miserable and watches the rain making patterns on a window pane for an hour. For Grey Skies Only? The Spy Who Shrugged At Me?

This New Year's Eve was the final barrier
Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.
We took you up and we put you in the back seat
Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.

You want a perfect song? You want a perfect song by a band at the absolute peak of their powers? You want a perfect song by a band at the absolute peak of their powers casting the British Invasion of the US charts in terms of an S&M act?

It’s rhetorical, I know you do, its why I love you so; you filthy little rats!

Welcome to another of my very favourite LPs, Blue Öyster Cult Secret Treaties.

Just when I think Blue Öyster Cult couldn’t get any more slinky and menacing, any more measuredly cynical and arrogant they sidle up to you clad head-to-toe in leather and slip a dog collar around your neck. I love it like the filthy little rodent I am.

As always Blue Öyster Cult’s weapon of choice is the poignard rather than the club, which is why I never understood them when I was young and stupid. There is also something oddly diffident about the band too, excellent players all, there is a total lack of the overt, flexing virtuosity that is such a intrinsic component of hard rock.

That also flows into the lyrics, not a single set of which was written by the band on Secret Treaties, instead they were supplied by Richard Meltzer, Sandy Pearlman and the keyboard player’s girlfriend. I find that such an odd submission, surrendering your voice, to almost become an amanuensis for another’s agenda*; maybe they just realised the quality they were getting outweighed their own capabilities at that point.

Secret Treaties slinks away from the starting blocks with the manly strut of ‘Career Of Evil’. Over a wonderfully melodic restrained organ driven track, Patti Smith’s lyrics give us some real tongue-in-cheek macho badassery, to the point where they had to be censored for airplay reasons**.

Next up those Öyster boys give us the gentle, flowing ‘Subhuman’. A perfectly poised tune, lyrically talking resignation in an underwater setting, it treads some of the same water as ‘Submission’ in my last review, they mean it (mer)man! Albert Bouchard’s drumming is incredible here, as it is throughout Secret Treaties, creating that scaffolding to support those intertwining guitar lines.

Then we get a wonderful cross fade into ‘Dominance And Submission’ and … I struggle for words here, I mean how many synonyms are there for ‘strut’, ‘slinky’ and ‘menacing’? It’s just so incredible the way the whole song is structured and changes, the way Albert Bouchard sings the final section where he (American youth? airplay?) is being dominated is just pure pervy genius. Add in some genuinely stinging guitar and I’ve truly just been forced to my knees.

No break, no let-ups and we’re straight into the jackboot biker boogie of ‘ME 262’, which is also deeply funny and rather arch; additionally it provides us with the LP cover image^*. Oddly enough, whilst sounding a bit like Hawkwind it treads some similar turf to Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, which also came out in 1974.

Göring's on the phone from Freiburg
Says "Willie's done quite a job"
Hitler's on the phone from Berlin
Says "I'm gonna make you a star"

Flipping Secret Treaties over I have to confront ‘Cagey Cretins’, which manages to discomfit me a little every time I hear it for reasons I can’t quite explain, maybe something about the register it’s sung in? In any case it’s a lesser track for me, the only one here.

Some days ‘Harvester Of Eyes’ is my very favourite song by Blue Öyster Cult, portraying the grim reaper as a weird necro addict ‘I need all the peepers I can find’ and referencing being ‘so high on eyes’. All of this contained in a restrained boogie and Eric Bloom’s vocal sung as though through a rictus smile, before descending into gibbering unintelligibility by the song’s end. Do I need to say how great the guitar soloing here is? the music box outro is pure Alice Cooper, leading as it does straight into …

‘Flaming Telepaths’ which is one of those songs that can simultaneously rock a stadium and move a lone listener to tears, ‘Well I’ve opened up my veins too many times’ and ‘I’m looking for rebellion, I’ll settle for lies’, Bloom sneers. How could I ever think BÖC weren’t heavy enough?! there’s none heavier!

Which allows us to move to Secret Treaties closer ‘Astronomy’ which is a decidedly odd fish indeed. Lyrically adapted from a poem by Sandy Pearlman it sounds like a grandiose song from the freakiest musical you can imagine*^. Dual guitaring abounds and as always the rhythm is utterly irresistible, especially as it heads to a magnificent juddering, umm, climax.

Have I told you yet how much I love Secret Treaties? maybe it is time for me to get off the fence here about it. It is nigh-on a perfect LP from a band of ravening sickos at the absolute height of their powers. I love how channelled and restrained they sound most of the time here, it really does sharpen the point of the knife.

Ladies and gentlemen, astronomers, subhumans, cretins, telepaths, harvesters, dominants, submissives and assorted filthy rats, I commend Secret Treaties to you all. Buy it now, if you don’t have it and join our cult.

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*Pearlman even writes the ambiguous line ‘Oyster boys are
Swimming for me now’ in ‘Subhuman’, almost flaunting it.

**down Patti, down I say!! ‘Do it to your daughter’ became ‘Do it like you ought to’ and ‘I want your wife to be my baby tonight’ to ‘I want your life to be mine, maybe tonight’. I rather like both versions.

^he’s such a precise, busy drummer. Really subtle by rock standards.

^*without explaining Eric Bloom’s rather alarming cape.

*^Drugsy Malone?

So back in 1992 Love/Hate got Wasted In America and as much as I loved them I was too busy spending all my hard-earned dishwashing money on getting Wasted In Wales to buy LP secundo at the time.

So I came to Wasted In America at the ripe old age of 38 rather than 20 and despite my terminally arrested emotional development it makes a difference. Tastes move on, sensibilities change and try as I might, you never inhabit the LPs of later life as much as you get to live every second of every album you have as a teenager; mostly for weight of numbers reasons coupled with job, family, DIY – all the good stuff.

So after spinning Wasted In America a few times and shrugging my shoulders I pretty much forgot about it, which coincidentally is kinda what the rock buying public did back in ’92.

Following their debut LP Love/Hate reallocated from California to New York and then got involved in the most bizarre argument any 90’s hard rock band EVER got into with their record label. The label kept rejecting the band’s offerings as being too commercial and worried that they were losing their heavy edge. This is such an inversion of the normal order of things that I can only surmise it must have been an as yet unrecognized piece of high performance art. So it goes.

My first thoughts on spinning Wasted In America is just how busy it sounds, bassist Skid Rose was the songwriter for the band and his bass dominates the overall sound; which would be fine if occasionally he didn’t edge towards that worst of 90’s rock obscenities, the F-word*.

Out of the restlessly twitchy nature of the tunes here some great tunes do emerge, ‘Time’s Up’, ‘Spit’, ‘Tranquilizer’ and the title track stand out here. Where Love/Hate stand out is when they allow their slightly artier streak to infect their rock. The odd echoes of Jim Morrison’s ‘and he walked on down the hall’ spiel in the psychedelic sex strut of ‘Cream’ and the weird audio laminations of ‘Yucca Man’, being two cases in point.

It might be the legacy of having to work with a more confused bunch of tracks but throughout Wasted In America John Jansen doesn’t give Love/Hate the same heft and venom that Tom Werman managed to conjure for them on their debut. As a result its an LP that can wash over you, rather than clout you upside your head. I can’t help yearning for a more uncluttered heavier version of ‘Time’s Up’ for example.

Also bringing Wasted In America down a bit are the last four tracks on the album, which are real also-rans, especially the woeful yet promisingly titled ‘Don’t Fuck With Me’. I am torn between thinking the LP sounds like it was made in haste, or whether it was overcooked.

Still there are some real good times to be had inside these covers, although you do need to overlook some sex lyrics that I would have found gauche even as a lusty 14 year-old horn dog, to do so; I’m looking at you ‘Spit’ and, umm, ‘Cream’. I mean that can sometimes be very much a big part of the naïve charms of music from this era but Love/Hate still have the capacity to make me wince at times^.

The band were sensationally good players all, the rhythm section do that thing that only the very best can by sounding loose and tight simultaneously and Jon E. Love is a great guitarist, absolutely stand-out so on the ‘Cream’ and ‘Tranquilizer’ in particular. Jizzy Pearl does his thing well too, I prefer his singing on the heavier numbers than on anything softer here.

So the quest for the great lost rock LP continues^^, Wasted In America isn’t quite it, despite being an album that merited more attention that it got/gets and still sounds good today.

Plus its well worth getting for Skid’s cover art, which is the other thing he did when he wasn’t writing all the band’s songs. A talented dude.

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PS: Wasted vs Blackout, in a video format –

*you know the one, surely. Four letters. Come on, don’t make me spell it out for you. Okay, okay it begins with an F ends with a K and in respectable journals is usually written thus, ‘F–k’. **

**Yeah, funk.

^who’d ever have thought it of a band with a singer called Jizzy Pearl?

^^as does my personal quest for the great lost sock with LPs on. Last seen with its, now bereft twin in the laundry.

I’m not a big one for rock pilgrimages but on our first day in New York for our 10th wedding anniversary Mrs 1537 and I braved a bitterly cold and snowy East Village morning to find 96 and 98 St Marks Place. I may have lost two toes on my left foot, a nipple and all feeling from the hair downwards but at least we found the cover location for Physical Graffiti*.

It’s a funny beast Physical Graffiti, it reigns over all, lauded as the biggest, best and the most excessive-y of Led Zeppelin’s albums, the very apex of their grand imperial phase. Everything before led to this, everything afterwards has a slight taint of disappointment by comparison**.

Physical Graffiti is a difficult LP to write about, unless you are a (non wi-fi enabled) pole-dwelling ascetic from one of the more obscure reaches of the Gobi Desert you will have read approximately 29 different magazine features on its genesis, its resuscitating impact on the US record industry, 9 different interviews with engineers Andy Johns and George Chkiantz and how ‘Kashmir’ is amongst the greatest rock songs ever written^.

Like many such obelisks strewn about our internal interminable teenage wastelands, Physical Graffiti is difficult to write about. It’s too big, too embedded in how we view and interpret other music to gain any perspective on, because of when we first encountered it. It sits there enigmatic and weathered, as the lone and level sands stretch far away.

So for one night only with a daring sleight of hand I will, ladies and gentlemen, present to you a series of vignettes on a theme.

My mate Julian lived in a big house and when his parents were out we climbed out of his bedroom window onto the flat roof of the extension, mostly so he could smoke without leaving a trace. One sunny summer holiday day he asked me if I knew Led Zeppelin; I did, I loved Led Zeppelin II and IV and told him so. Then he pressed play on his boombox and said he would play me their best LP. I recognized the first track as a Beastie Boys sample from ‘Time To Get Ill’.

Later there was a strangely Eastern sounding track, that went on for ages. I remember that too.

Hundreds of years ago Kerrang! ran a series over 4 issues where they named the Top 100 rock and metal LPs. I’m guessing this was about 1989. It’s how I first heard about Starz, Mother’s Finest, Montrose and Foghat; these were heady days for me. Physical Graffiti was #1 and this was the first time I saw its cover and realised the esteem it was held in. My fertile teenage brain grokked it all.

One night both parents were away at a friends over night, in my head it may even have been this blessed New Year’s Eve. The BBC were running an Old Grey Whistle Test retrospective (or was it the last episode?). Anyways this is where I first heard Television ‘Marquee Moon’ and definitely where I saw the video for ‘Trampled Under Foot’.

It was brilliant, scenes from old dance movies cut to the piston rhythms of Zeppelin. It made a massive impression and it is still my fave track on Physical Graffiti as a result.

Fast forward another year and my parents had some friends around on a Saturday night for curry, reggae and beers. I was playing the none-heavier blues lament ‘In My Time Of Dying’ in my room. My bedroom was heated via the flue pipe of the range downstairs in the kitchen and so sound carried both ways.

As Robert Plant was reaching his full wailing, Jesus invoking climax as all the music smashed and scorched around him, I heard my dad’s friend downstairs say ‘phew, bit different up there isn’t it?’ I felt simultaneously a bit embarrassed (about the God stuff in the song) and very righteous. That stuck somehow.

Several years later in Leeds a girlfriend was playing that Zeppelin cassette with the crop circles on the front and ‘Kashmir’ came on. ‘This is the sexiest song ever made’ she told me. I agreed, it would be rude and probably in all the circumstances rather self-defeating not to.

Reader, I married her.

Jon Bonham carries the rep of being a bit of a pugilist behind the kit, an unparalleled heavy hitter. He was but he was so much more too and I think some of his contributions on Physical Graffiti really give the lie to this. Think of the smart shuffling ‘Trampled Underfoot’, the gentle lilting rhythm of ‘Down By The Seaside’ and the lopsided heaviness of ‘The Wanton Song’. There’s a reason folks call boxing the sweet science.

Years later again on a holiday with our kids in Snowdonia, out walking near Machynlleth one day we saw a sign for a house called Bron-Yr-Aur, ‘just like the stomp’ I thought to myself, without fully engaging my brain, or even mentioning it to Mrs 1537.

It genuinely didn’t occur to me until I was home 2 days later, such is my speed of thought^*, that we were within gawking distance of the most famous cottage in Wales. The most famous cottage in Wales where no fewer than three tracks were written for Physical Graffiti; ‘The Rover’, ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ and ‘Down By The Seaside’. The most famous cottage in Wales …

Again, no photographs, I am a bit pants at rock pilgrimages.

Over the years I have gradually been drawn away from the obvious big beefy cuts on Led Zeppelin VI and find myself drawn to the burnished melancholy of ‘Ten Years Gone’ and the innocent fun of ‘Boogie With Stu’. I am still turning new corners and discovering new vistas despite being Thirty Years Gone.

My daughter asked me the other day if the Led Zeppelin LP with the house on the cover was worth a listen.

It is.

1181 Down (by the seaside).

*and the developing company lost my negatives when I sent them in to be developed. Thus ensuring I’ll have to go back there again. It’s not a problem I still have one working nipple.

**although in primo Four Weddings And A Funeral style I would just like to say how nice it is to see them all here today on that shelf.

^I disagree, it is amongst the greatest songs ever written.

^*I suspect I am the prototype forerunner for the next stage in human evolution, hence my astonishing mental powers.

I cannot answer on your behalf dear reader but in these uncertain times I do occasionally feel in need of some moral guidance and rectitude from my favoured recording artists. Today’s lesson comes from those upright, up-all-night, definitely not uptight Swedes, the Hellacopters:

Doin' very bad feelin' really ill
Blowin' doctors for sleepin' pills
So you wanna die don't care who lives
Scratchin' your crotch wondering what gives

I feel more morally equipped to deal with the world already.

Payin’ The Dues escaped from captivity back in ’97, probably by savaging a keeper before bending the bars on its cage to get out. It was the sequel to the Hellacopters debut LP* and was just part of an incredibly febrile, feral, feline time for Swedish hard rock/glam/garage/punk ‘n roll – think Backyard Babies, Hives and Gluecifer** too.

Hellacopters were formed by Nicke Andersson, drummer of death metallers Entombed, who decided that simply being the drummer in a band that totally changed a genre wasn’t cool enough. Recruiting three of Entombed’s former roadies he became the new band’s guitarist and vocalist.

That one of the ex-roadies was the supremely cool Dregen, already a member of 1537-faves Backyard Babies, did the project no harm whatsoever. Adding to the cool factor, not that they needed the boost, the Hellacopters opted for one of my fave things in the whole musical world, the band-name-as-surname thing.

By the time of Payin’ The Dues the sound of the Hellacopters was pure Detröit; speed, spittle and spite. Also factor in that every single track here has the kind of full on hard-charging guitar solo that can only ever be played properly shirtless in the rain, on the top of an erupting volcano, whilst wearing scratched mirror shades, cigarette dangling from the mouth. I am powerless to resist.

Pick your favourite track here from any of them, ‘You Are Nothin”, ‘Riot On The Rocks’, ‘Calapso Nervioso’, ‘Where The Action Is’, they’re all greatest hits LP material, basically.

Every single track here evinces the same full throttle, scorched nostril policy of an ultimately hedonistic band worshipping the MC5, without the free jazz bits. They drop a great cover of Sonic Rendezvous Band’s ‘City Slang’ too, which might be the best track here on some listens.

Blast my way with raging speed
Beelzebub gimme what I need    (Soulseller)

A particularly churlish churl might argue that Payin’ The Dues is all very well but the LP is lacking a bit of variety if you were looking for a single track that wasn’t played at breakneck speed and/or about action – the finding, getting, consequences, regrets and further pursuit thereof being particular obsessions hereabouts. I mean, for fuck’s sake people what did you expect?! the co-producer is called Andrew Shit! There’s a clue right there.

Again what do you expect from a band named after Mexican drug grower’s slang for CIA choppers?

This is music for rockin’, ragin’, destroyin’ and all the other good words without g’s on the end^. Payin’ The Dues is a welcome sure shot of adrenalin into the flabby corpse of pre-millennium rock. Subtlety be damned.

Perfect for a Wednesday night moral reset.

My copy of Payin’ The Dues is sadly not an authentically aged copy with the kind of patina a record can only acquire by being used to skin up on in a squat in Gothenburg, it is a 2017 RSD picture disc. I rather like the the fact that the notes on the back tell you which side is which and the poster of the Hellacopters branded jalopy, as neat an embodiment of their own self-destruction derby as one could ever want.

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*the supremely titled Supershitty To The Max.

**yes, I know they’re Norwegian but stop bothering me with facts when I’m trying to spin a narrative.

^gardenin’, cleanin’, ironin’ and exfoliatin’?

It was my mate Andrew who first played me Rainbow Difficult To Cure one night when I stayed over at his. He told me that the guitarist had been in Deep Purple and that Rainbow were excellent, although not as good as Stryper and that I just WOULD NOT BELIEVE their best track was actually ‘a Beethoven cover’.

Young mind = blown.

Older mind = blowing raspberries^

I needed a good time Wednesday listen and this was provided yesterday by Rainbow Difficult To Cure and bloody hell it did the trick, loud parping rock capturing that exact moment where Mr Blackmore, for a few dollars more, led his band of hired tired hands up to the precipice where proper hard rock skirted the fearsome valley of AM radio mush. This 1981 offering walked a very difficult line, almost perfectly.

Headline personnel news was the hiring of Joe Lynn Turner to add his pipework to a bunch of readymade cuts* following Ritchie Blackmore’s decision to instigate a process of conscious uncoupling with Graham Bonnet. Personally I think the departure of the ever peripatetic Cozy Powell was far more impactful, his flashy, dashing style would have jarred with the more commercial direction here, the blameless Bob Rondinelli^^ fitting in a treat.

The Russ Ballard-penned ‘I Surrender’ was a heart-seeking missile aimed squarely at the big radio dial in the sky. It is as timeless and brilliant a slice of radio rock as anyone ever concocted and I unashamedly love the way Turner tames the song right from the off, by the time Don Airey adds his little plonky bits at the edges and Blackmore glides in I’m in AOR heaven.

Then comes the superbly bonkers brilliance of ‘Spotlight Kid’^*, with that utterly bizarre keyboard solo from Airey that half wrecks, half makes the entire song, very eighties; regardless Blackmore plays an absolute blinder here and the lyrics are the best on the LP. I love how they encapsulate the lived experience of an occasionally amusing music blogger:

Jokers and women they hang 'round your door
They're all part of the scene
Just like a junkie you've got to have more
It's a pleasure machine

If you were looking for an underrated gem on Difficult To Cure, or in Rainbow’s discography for that matter, ‘No Release’ would be my call. There’s something pleasingly Zeppelin-shaped about the song’s structure and rhythm, without playing copycat. Turner excels again and the Queen-style breakdown mid-song is a pleasant surprise every time I hear it. Top draw.

As a connoisseur*^ of badly translated German I would be a fan of the instrumental ‘Vielleicht Das Nächste Mal (Maybe Next Time)’ even were it silent. It’s great though, corny and affecting as hell, just the sort of thing to soundtrack a compromised detective staring moodily out to sea in the end sequence of a low-budget continental TV series; in a good way.

There’s something great about the default Purple Rainbow boogie of ‘Can’t Happen Here’, again JLT really sells it as Airey plinks his plonkers and the Glover/Rondinelli rhythm section lock right in behind them. ‘Freedom Fighter’ isn’t a good song but it does contain some great low end guitaring from Blackmore, let’s leave it at that.

I am also a fan of the low-down blues-oogie of ‘Midtown Tunnel Vision’ although the lyrics really are a bit smelly the music is great.

Then it … I mean … just FFS Blackmore! Maybe ‘Difficult To Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth)’ is what happens if you have snorted far too much of your own ego for too many years and people are far too frightened to tell you that your last idea was shite. The beginning of it sounds like someone taking the piss out of Ralph McTell’s ‘The Streets Of London’.

Sorry Andrew.

Hubris aside Difficult To Cure is tremendous fun, as only really well played hard driving tuneful rock can be. Just surrender.

I really love the fact that the Hipgnosis originally offered the unsettling sleeve art for Difficult To Cure to Black Sabbath for Never Say Die three years earlier. I really couldn’t imagine them being switched now, given how iconic they both are.

1200 Down.

PS: what an excellent guitar solo, played by a man who really looks like he’d rather be at home painting his garage door:

^as befits jaded old fart.

*interestingly at a slightly higher pitch than was comfortably within his range.

^^a man I’ll swear I never heard of before yesterday, which is really weird for a nerdy rocker such as me.

^*I should stress that this song is absolutely no relation to the Captain Beefheart cut of the same name.

*^pretty sure that’s one of those fancy foreign words, possibly German.

This review may be slightly redundant as the greatest mind of our generation once wrote about it thusly:

The influential NWOBHM compilation Metal For Muthas, which helped launch the careers of Nutz and the E.F Band into the stratosphere as well as providing double loser ballast in the shape of callow no-hopers Iron Maiden. (it) came out in 1980 and all was metallic and groovy, the first volume even had a badly drawn mounted warrior/guitarist with diamond tits on the cover. 

He hath spaketh.

I was born into a scene of angriness and greed
And dominance and persecution

Welcome to the new decade, longhairs.

Metal For Muthas was released in February 1980 to document/promote the nascent NWOBHM scene* and for EMI to cash in, obvs. I am not sure if it is true that these compilations were compiled from demos that DJ/scenester Neal Kay had received, but that would make sense; he contributes slightly florid sleevenotes here.

Leaving Ethel The Frog to one side for a moment, the true historical interest in Metal For Muthas is the presence of the two Iron Maiden tracks, ‘Sanctuary’ and ‘Wrathchild’ which are present here in unique form. Both tracks were produced by Neal Harrison and predate their standard releases**.

Headline news? both are very much less punchy and iron-y^. ‘Sanctuary’ has a sound softened by some slightly indiscriminate flanging effects on the vocals and overall a slightly more raggedy sound, the overall affect is to dull the menace. As for ‘Wrathchild’, the Killers version is my favourite ever Maiden track, this is of historical interest only, as demos usually are but you can hear the basis for how damned mean the track would become one day.

Slough’s premier metal band are up next with their self-titled ‘Sledgehammer’, its great and it hits hard. Sledgehammer get 1537 bonus points for the line ‘Sixteen vestal virgins with skirts about their knees’, you just know the next line is going to finish with the word ‘please’; it doesn’t disappoint. There are minor differences between this version and the one on their debut LP, but you’d have to care more than I do to write about them. This is a great track, you just need to turn the bass up a bit on it.

How E.F Band snuck their mostly Swedish selves here is lost in the mists of an EMI contract, this is FWOSHM not NWOBHM! I really like the energy and very neat bass playing on ‘Fighting For Rock And Roll’, a heavier production tweak and the rhythm could have sounded like Motörhead.

How ‘Blues In A’ Toad The Wet Sprocket’s offering got here with its’ Skynyrd-by-way-of-Bedfordshire vibe is surely a tale in itself. There’s nothing wrong with the track but it’s not in the right place here. Much better is Praying Mantis ‘Captured City’, a really promising, tuneful track sporting an excellent guitar solo and some gallopy gallopy.

Metal For Muthas blazes on with more amphibian rock, Ethel The Frog ‘Fight Back’ in this case. I like how rough this one sounds, like it was recorded on a portable cassette player under the bassist’s bed, which is also its limiting factor.

Angelwitch ‘Baphomet’ is an entirely different cauldron of fish and the most metal track here by far. It manages to be menacing, muffled, magnificent in scope and slightly silly all in one go. It would certainly have sold the band to me back in 1980*^.

Then we are served Samson ‘Tomorrow Or Yesterday’ from their debut LP^* with Mr Samson himself singing. It’s absolutely brilliant too, expansive, really well produced and cheesily epic. At one point there’s a keyboard solo that sounds not unlike the noise one might reasonably expect an auto-tuned unicorn to make whilst having a theremin rapidly inserted up its exhaust pipe. True story.

Metal For Muthas ends with the oddest selection here, Nutz ‘Bootliggers’; that’s no reflection on an energetic Who-influenced hard rocker. The oddity is how this Scouse mob who had been going since ’73, supported both Budgie and Black Sabbath, having released four LPs snuck onto the NWOBHM train of exciting fresh new bands. They blew it by renaming themselves Rage immediately post-Metal For Muthas and blowing what name-recognition they could have gleaned from the compilation.

My cigarette smoky, slightly coffee-stained copy of Metal For Muthas is in tip-top condition and both despite and because of the occasional quirks of selection is a cheap LP well worth ferreting out.

The cover, derided as ‘cheap and nasty’ by Neal Kay is just that, although I do have a certain affection for a being christened by my chums as ‘old diamond tits’. I am totally in agreement that the sleeve notes should have been 100% better, an explanation and introduction to the tunes and bands involved. Ho-hum. Maybe they’d learn their lessons for the next volume?

'Cause I'm a wrathchild
Yeah, I'm a wrathchild
Yeah, I'm a wrathchild
I'm coming to get you, ooh, yeah, yeah

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PS: Not that I have anywhere to put that number of vestal virgins, would it be disrespectful to stack them purely for space-saving reasons?

*which I instinctively pronounce Nuh-Wobb-Ham.

**In May ’80 and February ’81 respectively.

^not to be confused with irony, which was still very much rationed in Britain at the time^^.

^^that’s me being ironic. I put the MF-ing meta in metal! (now go back to footnote ^^). Trapped for ever.

*^although that would have required me to be a far hipper 8 year-old than I actually was.

^*which contains the track ‘I Wish I Was the Saddle of a Schoolgirl’s Bike’; file under Titles-Not-Aged-Well, subsection hard rock, sub-subsection icky.

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name

I do love me a slice of old Sam Tay C and his ‘Rime syndicate. The plot of which involves the titular old salt pushed far beyond the reaches of civilization and normality, the corrosion of conformity to reason and the natural world leads him to desperately crave some deliverance from all that besets him.

If only an introduction like this could move seamlessly to an LP in the 1537.

Corrosion Of Conformity Deliverance. Wow. I came very late indeed to this particular party, having nailed C.O.C as a hardcore punk act I was absolutely blown away by the track ‘Albatross’ when I encountered it on Metallica’s Guitar Hero game*. Here was something anthemic, new and timeless somehow, hearing it was much more akin to rediscovering something you had forgotten, than hearing something novel.

Prices being what they were I was not able to pick up a copy of Deliverance on the cheap until the 2022 Century Media re-release. I have to say they did a brilliant job of it, liner notes giving an aural history of the LPs creation**, nice chunky vinyl with a great pressing and a quartet of worthwhile bonus tracks tucked out of sight on Side D of the double LP. Other reissue companies take note, this is the gold standard.

There is music on Deliverance too.

I love the choppy swooping ‘Heaven’s Not Overflowing’ its a shot of adrenalin and somehow always puts me in mind of being chased along a dirt road by a badass crew in a pickup truck; maybe that’s just me. The guitar sounds are solid southern, but the staccato assemblage of the riff is pure ’94, until they break out a great wailing solo straight out of Jacksonville ’74.

Then we’re into ‘Albatross’, which is exactly why we are here. The guitar tone is pure Fu Manchu but then they take it somewhere else with Pepper Keenan’s great yearning vocals. He really does mean it man. When the guitar cuts in it’s a tangible, physical thing blowing right out of the speakers at you. One of my very favourite tracks from that decade, I’ll swear my jeans grew patches and got bootcut spontaneously after listening to it 9 times on repeat.

Deliverance maintains the standard with ‘Clean My Wounds’ which somehow grafts Thin Lizzy onto something punky. Trust me those twin guitars and vocal phrasing is pure Bad Reputation. Mrs 1537 loves this song far more than she will ever love me, I can live with that.

There are three instrumental interludes on Deliverance, all three manage to be both utterly inconsequential and utterly essential somehow. They are clean, unhurried and classy, ‘Mano De Mono’ even goes a bit Brian May. Each being a palette cleanser for what follows, a bit of Shakespearian comic relief.

Relief being in short supply on ‘Broken Man’, a bitchingly heavy number built for grunge guys and gals to mosh to and the punkiest thing on Deliverance proper. Even better is ‘Señor Limpio’ which has a detached ZZ Top air about it, tied to a mean lyric about a substance abuser and some genius guitaring courtesy of Keenan and Woody Weatherman.

I’ll spare you a full track-by-track but I love the epic striving of ‘Seven Days’ which is pure classic rock, the assertive headache-y strut of ‘My Grain’ and the final left-right combo of ‘Shelter’ a wistful beast and ‘Pearls Before Swine’ a slow-burn menacing track with a touch of Alice In Chains harmony about it.

The bonus tracks on my copy of Deliverance really do add to it, which is pretty unusual. The band offer up a great reading of Black Sabbath’s ‘Lord Of This World’ an okay noisy track called ‘Big Problems’ and a scorching loud and punky cut called ‘Fuel (Jam-Box Tape)’, which I really wished was longer.

Deliverance is a hell of an achievement, a band really finding a radically new sound for themselves and cutting a classic-sounding rock LP which has enough of their old sound within it to keep it fresh.

I haven’t mentioned the rhythm section of Mike Dean and Reed Mullin at all and I should, they are immense; Mullin’s drumming in particular. They are thunderously loud whilst still being supple and subtle enough to allow everything to swing like it should^.

Weirdly for me I have yet to explore anything Corrosion Of Conformity did after Deliverance, I will one day but for no this corrosion is all I need.

It has absolutely no relevance to the platter in hand but let us finish with some more Sam Tay C, a verse that I often quote to myself, smugly it should be admitted, after some minor calamity or other^^.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn

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*the Mercyful Fate medley put me into finger hospital for a month when unwisely attempted on full difficulty level. True story.

**a tortured, risky genesis full of guitar layering and members being shed.

^specifically, in the manner of Godzilla’s nut sack.

^^like not having stamps, running out of coffee in the morning, all manner of day job stuff, you know the score.

Can a Queen LP ever be considered a hard rock ‘hidden gem’ or is that just crazy talk, fuelled by an excess of custard creams and several late nights?

Welcome to the 9th LP I ever bought* and my first live LP ever**, Queen Live Killers. Queen’s heaviest LP by far and for me, one that can duke it out with News Of The World, Jazz and Sheer Heart Attack as their very best.

It wowed me then, as it does now. From that stunning cover picture, the myriad of cool live pics on the inner gatefold, the sleevenotes on the inner sleeves, the logo/font that they only used on this album, right through to the action shot on the back cover. AND there’s music on it!

Live Killers starts, as do all live LPs worth their salt with fireworks/lightning/explosions and a band absolutely exploding out of the fucking gate. Queen throw themselves headlong into ‘We Will Rock You’; not the stampalongy clappy version, this is the ‘fast’ version^. It’s a hard rockers delight, Roger Taylor’s drumming sounding totally thunderous right out of the gate and Mercury chewing the scenery as only he could. Wow.

That they then leap into a truly venomous version of my favourite Queen song, ‘Let Me Entertain You’, followed by a plain nasty ‘Death On 2 Legs’ (complete with bleeped out swearing) is almost more than I can handle. Listen and then tell me Queen aren’t rockers, May is on astonishing form, making it hard to believe there’s only one guitarist playing a lot of the time.

They slash through ‘Killer Queen’, a truncated ‘Bicycle Race’ and a superb ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ which benefits from some great piano uplift by Mercury. You are indisputably in the presence of royalty here, the band shortening tracks for maximum impact and fit.

You take my body
I give you heat
You say you hungry
I give you meat

Then a real fave for 15 year-old me, the piano that signifies ‘Get Down, Make Love’, a slower treat that still sounds decidedly rude 45 years on, the wild, slightly corny, psych bits of which still thrill me today. AND all that is just on side one.

Live Killers serves us a raw, singalong (‘you buggers can sing higher than I can’ quoth Mercury) 8-minute version of ‘Now I’m Here’ with an explosive finale. Then we get an easy section with the goofy sweet ‘Dreamer’s Ball’, the bigger-now-than-it-was-then ‘Love Of My Life’ and a wonderful hoedown take on ”39′, which was worth the price of the LP for me. This iteration of Queen just itched to rock us harder though and hurtle through ‘Keep Yourself Alive’; harder and funkier live, kudos to Mr Deacon particularly here.

The highlight of the third side of Live Killers is the 12-minute take on ‘Brighton Rock’ which, great song aside, features May at the absolute height of his powers, umm, playing with himself via various clever echo tricks. It’s either a testament to his musicality, or my ultimate guitar geekiness that every nano second of it enraptures me^*.

There are some very welcome surprises on the final side, the use of ‘Mustapha’ as the intro to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the inclusion of the absolutely ROCKING ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and the absolutely pummelling ‘Sheer Heart Attack’; I bloody love how much attack the band have here.

The closing trio, were as they always would be and would be evermore, they’re great*^ but, you know, I’ve heard them too many times to actually listen properly; plus the bombast of ‘We Are The Champions’ alienates me a touch, I’ve always found it a bit smug. Personally I’d have finished with ‘Sheer Heart Attack’, or broken ‘Ogre Battle’ out of the closet, but I’m weird.

Live Killers is absolutely immense, Queen at the height of their rock powers before they started exploring elsewhere for their kicks; I love it all but I’m a 70’s child chronologically and rockologically too.

It does seem odd to me that Live Killers never seems to get the same reverence as all those other 70’s live albums you can think of, it’s just better than any of ’em.

Like the very best bands, or teams, Queen always seemed to be so much better than the sum of their disparately talented parts should have made them, even. Four brilliantly talented musicians, who all just happened to be great songwriters and identifiable personalities; Roger was always my favourite, although I loved John’s wry smile and ‘how did I end up here?’ stage persona.

They really don’t make bands like this anymore.

They really don’t make LP’s like this anymore.

Live Killers? slay.

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PS: Because I love you

*7 of the previous ones also being Queen. I bought this a couple days after my 15th birthday, so I am guessing that I blew my birthday cash on it.

**If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It (my first AC/DC album!) following it into the 1537, or rather the 16 as it would have been called then, a few months later in January ’88.

^which is actually longer than the other version, but lets just gloss over inconvenient facts for now.

^*I do wonder now, a sadder and a wiser man, how influenced he was by Manuel Göttsching Inventions For Electric Guitar from ’75.

*^especially ‘We Will Rock You’ here, it’s played with more intent than later live versions I have.