Vinyl Antiquity

SOUNDS OF UNREST IN THE 60S- BULLDOG BREED, RUST, AND THE KOOBAS THE THREE BEST PSYCH ALBUMS EVER!!!

2012-02-25T18:03:00.002-08:00

Sorry for being away from my writings for so long!
The truth is that I've been buried in records to listen to and absorb for ages. Also, my job as a cat caretaker at the SAVE animal shelter (you should donate to them if you're local to the Princeton area- they are the one pet shelter who never put the animals down if they aren't adopted) and things have been kind of not so jolly.
I no longer can see England as the Paradise I dreamed it is and I guess these 3 rather ferociously "Decline And Fall Of The British Empire" records from back in the 1960s prove that. However, England is still special and I still hope to go there this summer and meet some of my true mates there.
England has been through some rough times, but during the 60s the whole world was in an upheaval. A revolution was going on and music was part of that revolution. No rules were set as to what you could and couldn't do anymore and if there was a rule the mindset then was to break it. A complete opposite of when the music industry got greedy after that adventurous period between 1966-1970. I've said July is the best psych record ever. Well, I would stick by that and just change it to high rank in the top 5- it isn't like these 3 where a darker, more menacing sound that foreshadows the hard rock assault of the early 70s underground scene is prevalent for the entire album. I tend to prefer the harder, darker, more "underground" British psych of The Koobas and these other two- underground but very catchy. Even into the early 1970s or mid 1970s England's underground was producing some excellent music that I would say is some of the best in the world. The problem would be that England was also producing the worst shite ever recorded by the likes of Deep Feeling, Beggars Opera (although this Scottish band were to change after 3 horrible albums into a solid hard rocking guitar band after booting out horrid vocalist Martin Griffiths), Magna Carta, and Capability Brown (who I refer to as "Incapability Brown"). Had the rot set in there too like I've said it had in America? Am I just one of those music fans who complains all the time about things like sick gory lyric writing, bad vocals, horrible playing, and the like that I can pick out of any bad prog rock release? Well, no. I love progressive rock when done properly, but prog has to have muscle or else a real aching sense of beauty or it just won't work. I'm more of a Camel or Yes person than Gentle Giant or the band I'll take over them any day Genesis. Genesis actually could be seen as a continuation of the unrest in Bulldog Breed, Rust, and The Koobas in the 1970s and it would be funny to speculate that since the late Tony Stratton Smith managed Genesis after The Koobas the whole idea of "The Knife" was ripped off from "Barricades." The problem with Genesis was that they had all the perfect ingredients, but the cake wasn't always the same when they baked it. A little more spice would have helped, but give them credit- they were a good hard working band who went on to major success only after about 4 or 5 years of being a band who had not one hit to their name. The problem with post 1969 British music is that it went into a million different directions some of which was marvelous and some of it just horrible. I love the 1970s and I'll stretch it into the 1980s that some great music was still being made. Even in the 90s there was a sort of revival of British pop psych only harder edged with the likes of Blur, Radiohead, Portishead (these last two would have qualified as ULTRA UNDERGROUND in the 60s/70s) and The Stone Roses NOT Oasis (pretend Beatles- just teenybopper re-baked rubbish). Where the fun really is though is back in 1968/1969 when these three gems were conceived and/or released. In the case of The Koobas and Bulldog Breed 1969 was their year. Rust were an Anglo/Australian heavy psych/rock trio who were living in German and recorded their album there in it has been said 1968 or 1969. All three of these records rock and rock hard.
                                     The Koobas let's start with, shall we?
The Koobas formed in 1964 in Liverpool just in time to be a small part of the Merseybeat boom that was started by The Beatles. They even shared the same manager in Brian Epstein. Luck was incredibly bad for The Koobas for their entire career. As 1965 turned to 1966 then 1967 to 1968 excellent singles were recorded and miraculously none of them were huge hits. From the beginning of their career till the end the band was comprised of the late Stu Leathwood (Vocals, guitars, keyboards), Roy Morris (Lead guitar, vocals, sometimes lead vocals on their 1969 self titled masterpiece), Keith Ellis (Bass guitar, vocals), and Tony O'Reilly (Drums, percussion, backing vocals). Despite the huge amount of talent and adventurousness contained in the group it just wouldn't happen for them until they had a bit of a splash with a version of Cat Stevens "The First Cut Is The Deepest" which Rod Stewart would later rip the vocal from for his version. I love Rod Stewart when he was great, but listening to The Koobas record on the songs Stu Leathwood sings sometimes I think that Rod owned a copy of the record and played it a million times while calculating his next career move. Leathwood's next career move after The Koobas really shows the similarity. He would go on to just one more band- Harlan County who were a steal of Rod Stewart's early solo releases and a good steal at that. It could be it's just an uncanny resemblance- high, throaty, soulful, melodic vocals, but not too high. The high pitched harmonies of The Koobas on their eponymous 1969 album and reissued brilliantly by the long since defunct Bam Curuso as Barricades recall Uriah Heep. This was before Uriah Heep would perfect the high operatic harmony singing that even now is their trademark, so it would be interesting to speculate perhaps MR. Ken Hensley or David Byron too had a copy of The Koobas. Indeed, Hensley's pre Uriah Heep projects The Gods and Head Machine bear a resemblance to The Koobas' sound.
      The high lead voice on some tracks on The Koobas is lead guitarist Roy Morris. The Koobas had something to say that had been bottled up for too long. Their lack of action on the singles front wasn't exactly going to lead to an album so with the show just about over before throwing the towel in just like The Zombies had done with Oddesey And Oracle they went into the studio and made their masterwork. They'd never followed conventions nay they'd defied them, so view the album as an act of defiance. A rock and roll band through and through with pop hooks thrown in they made an album of solid hard edged psychedelia that dabbled in prog rock, pop, and soulful moves whilst every song was drawn together by a funny little bit of playfulness. Of the 3 masterpieces of British psych here The Koobas are the least downtrodden sounding, but underneath the lively exterior there is a lot going on that suggests a kind of "Decline and Fall" concept. While it explodes in "Barricades" which could be called psychedelic metal the rest of the album takes old English music hall traditions in an effort to illustrate a kind of sequence of songs more about endings than beginnings. It could be pure speculation on my part, but I think the "Ending" concept is more than just about the end of the band. The troubles had started in Northern Ireland. There were riots everywhere around the world. Flower power was dying out fast. England's future as a world power looked questionable and the whole idea of an "Empire" was beginning to seem rather dated and bewildering. Ray Davis and The Kinks would release Arthur and that would be a theme Ray would come back to many times since that seminal record, but the 1969 album that takes the cake for Prototype hard rock psych/poppsych must be The Koobas. Currently the value of this jewel is over 1,000 US dollars and also over 1,000 pounds! Ouch! When an album doesn't sell and a cult ensues around it look for things like that to happen. It must really piss the band off they made nothing off it, but the adulation then again may make it all worthwhile.
     Song highlights are many. Here's a personal little run through. "Royston Rose" is an out and out rocker beginning the record with heavy dirty guitars, strong vocals, pounding rhythms, and a really kind of subtly sinister groove. It sounds like they are about to turn into Led Zeppelin on this one! Roy Morris has a funny voice- very high and with a slight lisp, playful and unpretentious. Very impressive song and a great way to start an album. "Where Are The Friends" is a more reflective number with sombre atmosphere and a fantastic lead vocal from Stu Leathwood in a song again powered by superb guitar riffs. Side One gets really heavy again with "Constantly Changing" which manages to combine the high Uriah Heep progressive leanings with the hard rock side of UH or Zeppelin of "Royston Rose." Like the title this song constantly changes- you don't know where it's going to end up! "Here's A Day" is the most lighthearted track on Side One- a very pleasant slice of pop psych reminiscent of The Idle Race- another great band who never made it despite 3 brilliant LP releases. This song is about a day that goes nowhere. "Fade Forever" closes the side and could be called Heavy psychedelic R&B! Leathwood's soul vocals are understated, unpretentious, and really shine on this track along with the hard hitting yet melodic guitars, bass, and drums. There's some nice mellotron passages too.
It's Side Two's opener that is the most violent track musically, lyrically, and vocally- the freaked out "Barricades." Heavy piano and guitar riffs at the same time drive along this track of bomb effects, screaming guitars, a recitation of Rupert Brooke's "Grantchester" and just about everything else they could think of. The lyrics are based on the riots, destruction, unrest, and violence erupting everywhere. As stated, I can hear some of the beginnings of "The Knife" by Genesis here as it is a very disquieting, riveting experience. Unfortunately, Side Two then goes into the one dud track here- an awful version of "Piece Of My Heart." This is so boring I don't think I even want to waste my pen on it. It sounds almost bad on purpose, but not even funny just stupid. The Marmalade did it a lot better. "Gold Leaf Tree" will wake you up if the previous track made you full of inertia. This is progressive rock before it really had ANY ground rules set. Keith Ellis excels both as the main writer here and for his brilliant driving bass parts. The strong vocals, soaring vibrant music, brilliant Mod drumming, and beautiful lyrics make this a real highlight. Amazing song! "Mr. Claire" is a Stu Leathwood track and very joyful, very nice. It's here that he sounds the most like Rod Stewart, incidentally. "Mr. Claire" has some swinging guitar and rhythm section work, great mellotron, and a beautiful vocal from Leathwood. The closing track "Circus" is the most celebratory offering here, but beneath all the laughs is another early progressive number that makes you never know what to expect next. I can hear The Beatles in this one where for the rest of the album I'm thinking more Small Faces gone heavier, but there's that Marriott/Lane brilliance in here too. There's lots of fun on this track with lines about lions, elephants, funny voice overs, just a blowout of joy. Then when the album ends you really wish there could be an answer for some of the heavier stuff on here lyrically. Is life a joke to laugh at and take lightly? I don't have the answer. Maybe The Koobas had it and didn't have enough time to make it more obvious to us. This album is fantastical. It's about the best British psych album ever along with the other two I'll discuss here, but I wanted to give the most detail to The Koobas. Find the reissue or CD of this if like me you simply can't afford an original or find one for a more reasonable offer- and to think that back in 1996 when I was a green 20 year old I was the one responsible at a record show for a funny English character/dealer getting 300 pounds for it then! Seems like nothing now! But this album seems like something that might be worth all the money it goes for...
     Bulldog Breed were a band who came out of The Flies, Please, and The Gun who were already more underground acts than many were during their time. Before Asgard guitarist/principal writer Rod Harrison already had a vision of the British Empire rotting and crumbling away into nothing. Together with drummer extraordinaire Louie Farrell from underground heavy psych masterpiece group Gun and ex Flies/Please members Robin Hunt (Lead vocals, flute, guitar, keyboards) and Bernie Jinks (Bass guitar, vocals) they made an album similar to The Koobas if they got really angry on a second release. There is so much venom here on this record that it's almost scary. The toytown poppsych numbers which hearken back to the whimsy of 1967 are a refreshment, a little bit of a cleanser for the violent heavy psychedelic onslaught of the rest of the album. Very much an underground band, Bulldog Breed have the Mod vibe still intact, but complete with overt Satanic themes dark doomy Sabbath style metal is lurking in the grooves. It's faster than Sabbath and Robin Hunt much less subtle in his delivery than wonderful Ozzy, but Ozzy, Iommi, Butler, and Ward would love this. So should you. The reason is easy to point out- despite how frightening in power this album Made In England is it's also a record full of mischievous playfulness and high energy. I can't give a run through of all 14 tracks, but if you want to know why Bulldog Breed is the most underrated British psych masterpiece I can tell you there is not even a mediocre track present on this record out of all 14! Fantastic musicianship, a multitude of different genres being covered tastefully, intelligent pissed off lyrics, and snarling vocals make for a real masterpiece. Sometimes the music is soft, happy, or reflective, but those moments are fleeting. "When The Sun Stands Still," "Sheba's Broomstick Ride," "I Flew," "Paper Man, "Reborn" and the other heavy tracks here are the perfect beginning for British underground rock. There's a lot of psychedelic rock with the brilliance of early hard rock takes on the fall of the Empire, the follies of people who try to think their humdrum lives mean something, and Satanist lyrics all creating a Devilish brew of Hammer Horror fun! Bulldog Breed used to be ignored. It wasn't mentioned in the same breath with other conceptual and semi conceptual records it actually blows out of the water or any of the highest of psych records, but when word got out the price shot up really high. What pisses me off is that nobody ever talks about how this is essentially Asgard before Asgard and T2 before T2 or even a mention of the Gun connection. Personally, Asgard and Gun are top favourites with me, but I'd rate this even higher than T2! Wow! There is such an English vibe here even as they sing about it all going to rot. There's a resilience. They aren't gonna go down without a dirty and mean fight. Bulldog Breed clearly are a Take-On-The-World group and that irreverence shows here in a big way. Every track will try something a little different, a little offbeat, and that makes for a lot of fun. If you don't know your English history you'll learn something about England here. It's great, all of it. It's a shame nobody gave this band the push they deserved because had they Bulldog Breed could have been even bigger than Black Sabbath. Bold words, but listen to the record and you'll know what I mean.
     Rust's one foray into vinyl Come With Me is the one of these 3 that's still the most underrated and I can't figure out why. Nothing they'd go on to do after this album would equal it both as later members of the excellent for their first album Freedom or as the great but a bit hard to take in large doses Creepy John Thomas. Vocalist/guitarist "Creepy" John Thomas came from Australia and met up with Walt Monaghan (Vocalist, bass) and drummer Brian Hillman in Germany presumably. They were living in Germany when they recorded Come With Me as Rust Underground in 1968-1969 on the budget HorZu label. This record is every bit as good as The Koobas and every bit as good as Bulldog Breed. It can be considered a cross between both, but with more of the anger and disillusionment of Bulldog Breed than the whimsical side of the The Koobas. Johnny Thomas comes from a blues rock background and his voice and guitar reflect that. He has a strong kind of Lou Reed/Mick Jagger thing when he sings and his rockin' guitar is an important factor in Rust's sound. Monaghan and Hillman are the more psychedelic influenced in the group and instead of a mess it all falls together brilliantly with not a weak track in the lot here. "You Thought You Had It Made" was probably called "Fuck You" and they had to change the title- it certainly is a nasty, angry note to begin a record on about a falling out with a particularly annoying ex girlfriend. Thomas sounds downright vulgar and in the process puts both the Pretty Things and The Rolling Stones to shame. Imagine a more psychedelic Stones or an across the pond Lou Reed prototype glam/heavy sleazy blooze rock and you'll get a good idea. The rest of the album is very different- just as heavy, but also much less blues oriented. The lyrics become political or else very personal. Revolution is suggested as the only way to make the world a better place. Songs like "Please Return," the title track "Rust," and "Doesn't Add Up To Me" are whole lyrics of unrest and uneasiness. The rest of the album follows that same kind of wasted and depressed yet very exciting path. I really would say that with the great very Germanic production which includes loads of effects, the excellent musicianship, and absolutely top notch songs this album should go for 1,000 pounds. It has the sounds of a monster and it is a monster, but try finding an original copy and it will be hard, but won't cost you Koobas type money. Rust are a band who can adapt their heavy approach to great hooks and melodies with no problem whilst they also are a band where you have to listen to all the lyrics to all the songs because they have a whole lot to say.
    Was England really this bad off? It seems it was, but people wouldn't know how much worse things would get till the 1970s when every day and every night soldiers were getting killed and people were getting bombed by the IRA. An inept government would not make things any better and by the time musicians tried to catch up with what Rust are saying in the Punk/Thatcher era the whole thing had lost any sense of fun that was there. It all was a cash in and you'd do better to look into the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal than any Sex Pistols crap. I never got "Punk Rock." My take on it is just the same as Ray Davis in the CD bonus track on Sleepwalker "Prince Of The Punks" or any number of Ray/Dave Davis punk era tracks taking the piss out of it as sensationalistic talentless garbage. Rust are more dangerous that any garage punk 60s bullshit or late 1970s early to mid 80s punk rubbish and it is probably just that dangerous, violent, spitting-in-the-face-of-society attitude which made them so short lived. They were too ahead of their time. There's some ugliness on this record, but it's a good kind of ugliness that I think I like more than the affectation of Ugly put on by The Stones. This record is one where you know there won't be a followup because everything there is is thrown into the album leading you to not even speculate about a second release. Rust's time with us on record didn't last long, but what we got out of it is very impressive and I'd rate this as one of the best records ever made for heavy psych or Anglo/Germanic rock in general.
    All three of these The Koobas, Bulldog Breed, and Rust are saying the same thing, but they also all say in the music that you have to keep your faith up and keep fighting for your beliefs and your own personal vision. I'd recommend all 3 as the 3 best heavy psych records of the 60s and if you give them a listen you'll see why. Keep on rocking and keep on believing in music and your passions. That's what these 3 say and I still think England even if it may be flawed is something pretty special.

BRITISH POP IS NO POPPY COCK + SOME HARD WORDS ON THE CHARTS 70-76

2012-02-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Bulldog Breed's "Top O' The Pops Cock !?!?" for helping inspire the title.
Whether the fans want to admit it or not. Whether THEY want to admit it or not. Paul Revere And The Raiders, the supposed guardians against the British Invasion would never have existed without the British Merseybeat/Beat boom and no good American pop in the 60s would have been at all possible without bands like The Zombies, The Who, The Beatles, The Move, The Kinks, and we had one band who shot it right back to the British and they answered with more great music for us- the brilliant group The Left Banke. British pop is the best. The Left Banke are the best and so are the other very British influenced bands who came out of the States in the 1960s at a time when love was in the air and anything seemed possible. Maybe everything WAS possible.
Pop has often been a dirty word to certain narrow minded people with their head up their arse, but you always know who the real music collectors and fans and friends are because they are the ones who are open to anything. Great British pop like The Magic Lanterns (The Shame Shame album on Atlantic is amazing), Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mich And Tick's best material, The Move, The Koobas, Apple, The Idle Race, Grapefruit, (who it must be said along with The Move and Koobas were venturing far into psychedelia and then became a great hard rock/power pop band on a shamefully underrated 2nd album Deep Water), The Creation, The Smoke (whose album I really wish I'd kept), Cartoone (From Glasgow Aye), The Casuals ("Jesamine" mmmm what a tasty piece of Baroque beauty and many other gems) has always been held in outright contempt by Americans who can't get over the fact that NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT GREAT BRITAIN. They say the music is fey, too "English" whatever that means, or some other stupid excuse or just that since pop can be played top volume in the car or radio it is too commercial. The most bollocks I've heard was from one unnamed record dealer or two who called it "Too clean" and "Too perfect." What, should music look like a pile of rubbish inside a barn with GARAGE PUNK spray painted in all caps on it? I know it sounds like I'm ranting here and taking a lot of liberties so let's end the rant. The point is that through their own influences and the influences brought over from the best American geniuses like Brian Wilson and Phil Spector (a maniac, but he created the Wall Of Sound and we should love his productions) the British perfected pop. They would be the bright spotlight in the charts in the early 70s when American bands who were pop really were all the insults people throw at that term when they stormed them. Of course, the 1960s set all of those bands up as they cut their teeth on the club circuit playing Mod pop/psych, but we can't forget them. At a time when all in the American charts was gloom and depression from the Yanks we had Vanity Fare, White Plains, The Fortunes (of "You've Got Your Troubles" 1965 beat era fame), The Marmalade (shed a few tears whilst hearing "Reflections Of My Life"), and The Sweet as the only really great talent that also translated into hit singles. And what of David Bowie? Don't forget him. Don't forget that glam rock gave us some great crossover hits and soon American bands were forming to come out in the middle of the 70s with a shot of excitement brought on by the UK bands. Some of the worst hacks were English, in fact the worst of them all was Rupert Holmes who took a talented group of guys from Wilkes Barre P.A called The Buoys and made them into a one-off hit about disgusting cannibalism in "Timothy," but these hacks were just copying the Americans. In the 1960s there was exciting music from everywhere and the competition was fierce, but the bands were young then and they could handle it. If you didn't make the charts, but you made an album that could be filed under "Pop" full of great melodies you still won the fight.
Let's skip ahead to 1970. British pop and British rock are very old-world. They are influenced by the rich history both musical and martial of their country and soon this kind of ultra super refined, tight, disciplined, and straight forward moving sound was causing Americans to hate all things UK Pop/rock while they swore by bands as dire as Bloodrock or The Stooges just because they sounded "American." I know that type. They are the same type who grew up to be Tea Party mutations and George W. Bush supporters. The wise Americans all either went underground or decided they'd be better off writing, producing, and recording their own perfect pop like Carole King, early Todd Rundgren, and Emitt Rhodes. The singer songwriter movement began. A lot of it was pretty foul, but you could always spot a winner in the crowd because they'd be the ones who brightened our country up with big hits. Daryl Hall and John Oates may get slammed by people who think they are too "clean" or too "soul," but they gave us over a decade's worth of excellent hits perfectly crafted, beautifully sung, sympathetically arranged. Songs like "She's Gone" will live forever, but "She's Gone" probably wouldn't have made it without Carole King. It is Ms. King who took a look around the world and took British smoothness and mixed it with a good dose of gospel and R&B that we have to thank for that one bright spot that ignited the charts in 1972 America- Tapestry. How, though, we would survive in a world where only a self-made solo artist who'd worked on Tin Pan Alley could be a bright spot is that we wouldn't survive. War was on- and it wasn't just in Vietnam or for England Northern Ireland. A war happened in the world of music- a war between "Pop" and "Underground." Badfinger came over from England/Wales with backing from The Beatles and hammered us. They were the first band to make the problem visible. While they followed by others I've mentioned already were the groups who made great chart singles and great pop albums America only had a few solo artists and a duo. Daryl and John slaved over their music before making it. They began terribly and knew they had to improve. With Abandoned Luncheonette they achieved the goal of a perfect album, but we couldn't possibly survive in the charts with only 5 albums I can think of as classics with hits (Todd Rundgren: Runt- The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren. Todd Rundgren: Something/Anything. Emitt Rhodes S/T on Dunhill. Carole King: Tapestry. Daryl Hall and John Oates: Abandoned Luncheonette) compared to the storming by the British. Soon discontentment became the name of the game come 1971. American bands started to model themselves after British bands and forsook chart success for progressivism and hard rock. England's mighty hold over commercial music would never die. Between 1970 and 1975 hardly any American bands who made great music were making chart success. Things had gotten as grim as they were before The British Invasion so it's not a surprise there was a 2nd British Invasion. Badfinger, the tragic heroes who lost the lives of both main songwriters to suicide, spearheaded it followed by Queen, Pilot, The Sweet, Mott The Hoople, and out pop acts Vanity Fare, White Plains, The Marmalade, 10cc. In this period of time 1970 to 1976 the wake up call wasn't felt until a certain band called Boston decided that they could combine the artistic talents of a progressive band like Yes or Argent with loud guitars and pop melodies of their own. Boston broke through. It was wonderful and still is. Then AOR radio and AOR/Pomp rock came to enter the charts and finally it seemed we had some great British influenced bands saving the musical future of this country. It would only lead to the obvious. We could deliver some great AOR/Pomp rock, but it was so influenced both by Hall/Oates and the British that soon they would be producing the better bands. I haven't even mentioned The Shocking Blue or Abba, but they figure into this too and with all caps on QUALITY MUSIC. What happened to the days of great hits from American bands in the 1960s? We got too damned patriotic. We also got too paranoid. Xenophobic rock critics ruined everything and as any intelligent person will know bigotry of any kind should not be tolerated. That's right- bigotry played a big role in what was going to send America down the tubes into oblivion. Namely the amount of black music and black influenced music that was good and in the charts led to an outbreak of openly racist bands and solo acts who were so white you could just smell the stale scent of used up chalk and spray paint I mentioned before. For instance one of the biggest hits of the mid 1970s was "Play That Funky Music White Boy" by Donny Iris/Wild Cherry and Hall and Oates were dubbed by idiots "Blue Eyed Soul." Like John Oates who said that's a racist term he is right. That's truth. Soul is a state of mind, and there is no reason why Hall/Oates or Toto couldn't just be dubbed Pop, Power Pop, or AOR with soulful influences. This kind of childish teasing and hating was going on in the 1970s and I hate it. I wasn't born yet or I was a babe for most of that time, but I love music and I hate any kind of prejudice. Narrow-mindedness is a disease. If you're so white you don't have a shadow and you're so American you are wearing a badge that says in code "I HATE ALL FOREIGNERS" then you are sick in the head and don't have a heart. This disease would lead to grunge. It would lead to hate rock. It spells out the unrest that was going on in the 1970s and back into the 1960s with race riots happening all the time. Soon it would be 2001. You couldn't be blamed if you left the country or burned the flag- and that is a tragedy. That is the tragedy of America, but this is a music blog so no more about that except on the musical side of the fence. American bands started to go back and listen to the music of the 1960s and British bands. Soon we'd have some more promising sounding bands around, but chart success would prove elusive like nothing had changed. Let's not forget that The Zombies back in the 1960s made their masterstroke Oddesey And Oracle as a last effort right before throwing the towel in. That is one of the best pop albums ever made- a pure, majestic, emotional, warm, moving record of beautiful perfect pop. Badfinger toughened pop up. They released Straight Up after the equally brilliant No Dice consolidating success in the charts yet ending in the horribly tragic deaths by hanging of Pete Ham (1975) and Tom Evans (in the early/mid 80s sometime). However, the music of Badfinger lives on and really the more I think about it their strong solid mix of pop and rock would lead to some good crossover successes here. People have a thing about soft and laid back music when it gets commercial. If it's Bread whose first album is a Must Have, The Raspberries, or some of the better hits by The Eagles they don't like/hate it and if it's Vanity Fare or The Magic Lanterns they Despise it. Pretty sad. Pretty miserable. I don't want this blog to come off as a complete slamming of America or Americans as I do not feel that way at all, but the bad people in the population are the ones who are spinning the wheels of commercial success and big business. While thousands of young, innocent, worthy soldiers die in a pointless war nobody writes a good protest song with hit appeal like Earth Opera did back in the 1960s or Mr. Brilliant Bob Dylan did- they just put up an American flag and a yellow ribbon on their car. Do they really care about those boys? NO. In England things are just as bad politically/socially, but musically in a disturbing way most bands seem to either aim only at the Americans or just to not exist. So they too are now like the whole rest of the Western World dependent on the great classic Pop of yesteryear. Pop shouldn't be a dirty word. Neither should Love. Pop is all about love and British pop is the richest in romance there is in the whole world. The themes of young people falling in love written about as far back as The Beatles or later on by the masterful half English (Graham Russell- writer/vocalist) half Aussie (Russell Hitchcock vocalist extraordinary) Air Supply will live forever. In the 1990s there were some great songs by British bands Ten from Mainland England and Dare from Wales and now the most romantic band around is a band of amazing abilities called Elbow- guess where they are from? England. In England love is coming out. In America kids are beginning to listen to what is now called Classic Rock when it is really the cream of pop/rock. I believe in music as a healing power. British Pop is the greatest source of healing there ever will be. You should take a good healthy dose of strong, solid, unrefined British pop at least twice every day. To end this entry- remember that you are not the only one out there and that love is the thing, giving is the thing to do. Turn somebody on to good vibes not apathy. No matter what they call it/us good music and good people may be outnumbered, but we put up a really solid fight nonetheless.

LOVE AND MEMORIES FROM MY AGE OF INNOCENCE GRAFFITI AND CONDELLO STILL FIRM FAVOURITES TODAY

2012-01-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Dedicated to the memory of Micheal Condello who committed suicide back in the mid 90s. May your music live on and may we forgive your foolish act of desperation.
Dedicated in a happier light to all my mates both from back in my younger years to all the new ones I have today and continue to receive support from.
Special thanks to my good friends and record gurus Bill "Pennies" Pacquin and Jerome Tomko- boy it's been a long ride we've had together and we're still together- God Bless.
My story here takes place both now in 2012 and back 20 years ago in 1992 when I was turned on to 2 long standing brilliant records that captured my heart, body, mind, soul, and imagination back then defining over the years who I am. I have not lost sight of the dream I had when I was 16-19. I still believe in the philosophy of the 1960s counterculture. I merely have matured to see things broader and in a new light. Back in 1991 I was only listening to Frank Zappa. That was about it. I hadn't even begun to find a semblance of who I really was, but Zappa though he closed many doors at that time for me may have in time opened some by my seeing the 2 sides he had to his personality. Zappa's cynical, nasty, and self-loving philosophy that everything that wasn't him sucked out was unfortunately the same belief I held when I was 15 years old. Zappa also had a belief that music could cleanse the soul and enlighten people through sounds, vibrations, and compositions that would form a backdrop tapestry for their lives while they experienced his friendly, giving, generous side in concert. It is the latter side of Zappa, the latter belief that I still hold. My hatred of anything not Frank Zappa with very few exceptions back then was really through fear. Bill Pennies was trying to turn me on to psychedelic rock and progressive rock meeting with indifference or just all-out insulting what he loved from me. Bill had belief in me, though. He had a resilient belief in my intelligence and saw that I just needed nurturing. When he first tried with The Parlour Band he didn't succeed. He would in time win that battle and make me a lifelong lover of all things The Parlour Band AND The O Band (Also known as A Band Called O). When he first tried with Graffiti he also didn't succeed. I hated the album as it scared me like The Parlour Band had- both conjuring images of The Moody Blues. Bill could see I was a fairly timid, self-serious, and not with it kid then, but come the end of 1991 how things would change. Are you ready?
My whole personality started going through an upheaval in December 1991 and Bill finally won me over forever with the Swedish band Blond. Blond I gave a chance to. I let their music into my heart. I basked for hours in the warm glow of that beautiful album from a cold climate. It's a masterpiece of solid rock, psych, and dramatic pop that still has few equals. Were it not for Blond we wouldn't have had Abba- they broke through first with the international hit "Six White Horses," Abba following suit a few years later. I will skip over the trip to California, but that was a very important event for me. I have already documented it, though, so on to later on. In the August before my sophomore year at high school nobody was a better friend to me than Bill. I was taking every suggestion he had and he held the distinguished position of my mentor with my own growth taking off in a huge way to help. On a second attempt to get me into Graffiti he won straight away. I put the album on the turntable and fell in love with it. I called him up to tell him how much I loved it and he was really glad that he was making a lot of long leaps forward with me. It was in my sophomore year that I made all my best friends for the duration of high school adding and subtracting along the way. I no longer went after any kids who looked like or claimed to be "hippies". I stopped wearing insecure feelings on my sleeve abandoning them for confidence that was not ill-founded. I had lost big time as a Freshman trusting anyone way too much who pretended to be a hippy. Soon all that would change. Come that wonderful period of September 1992 to March 1993 I had the happiest time of my whole life. I was a winner. I was a musical encyclopedia, Bill was making lots of great suggestions, I had a group of kids who loved me to make all the white trash Grunge kids something I could combat more freely, and I had music taking me to new highs. During 1992 I discovered through Bill Graffiti and Condello and through my own accord much more. That I still love the madcapped multicoloured 1960s sounds today really shows something about strength through music, form, and melody.
So on to the banquet of sound! Graffiti were the revelation that came first. Hearing them again just now I'm overjoyed. I can see things in them that I couldn't see then- echoes of other groups along the way that came later. No one has figured out where in the States Graffiti are from, but it has been agreed they were probably an East Coast outfit. They only made one album back in 1969 I believe, but it still resonates with a lot of power today. Clearly influenced by the British Mod bands (The Who, The Hollies, The Beatles, and lighter, breezier acts) and the early progressive inclinations of The Moody Blues they played a kind of highly adventurous transitory poppsych into progressive rock sound with most songs strung together by interludes. Multi vocal harmonies twist around scorching virtuoso guitar work, psyched out sound effects, and adventurous songs with lead vocalist Tony Taylor sounding uncannily like The Moodies' Justin Hayward. There are influences from The Beach Boys in the harmony work and complex arrangements, but that is where any sunshine pop ambitions end. Graffiti are firmly an intellectual band who don't sing much about flowery sunshiny California girls. Their sound is characterized by a dark, plaintive quality no better demonstrated than in the outstanding tracks "Father Protector" and the two part suite "(1) The Capture Of Me (2) Life Blood" which open the album. Also proof of their daring originality is "New Life" and the shocking rest of Side Two that follows it where conventional structures are thrown out the window. There is poppsych, hard rock, progressive rock, jazz influences, classical ambitions, art rock, bluesy pop all thrown together in a way that works brilliantly. The only misstep is the one commercial number "Jingle Jangle Woman" and with a title like that need I add anything? They probably were forced into it as it sounds like a joke that falls flat on its face. The rest of the album is pretty astonishing. Most of the songs are written by bass guitarist/keyboard player Steve Benderoth with George (Aka Jorge) Stunz (Lead guitar), Jon ST John (Rhythm guitar), and Tony Taylor (lead vocals) sometimes pitching in. Fantastic Mod raver type drummer Richie Blakin rounds out the group, but does not compose. "Father Protector" begins with one of the most complicated guitar intros ever- something to rival even Steve Howe in Yes. The classical grandeur of that Spanish inflected guitar moves into a song that is so powerful in feeling and emotion that it truly takes me by storm when I hear it still. Lyrically pretty dark it only offers an escape at the end with the lyrics sounding like Benderoth just had a bad experience with acid or a personality shake up that left him with something very unusual to write. The guitar is mainly played through a wah-wah pedal soaring around the arrangements while Taylor could easily be Justin Hayward in disguise. I'm reminded of The Moody Blues circa In Search Of The Lost Chord or To Our Childrens Childrens Childrens Children. Yes, it cuts that deep and is that good. Like The Moodies the album flows together like a concept, but just what that concept is I still haven't figured out. "The Capture Of Me" is another bitter take on society where he finds himself and loses everyone else. Clearly set at the time as he loses his place in society after growing his hair, that is the only reference here that is dated 1968/1969. Graffiti have a forward moving sound that you have to be in the same room with it to hear, but what a sound they have and what a masterpiece this is. I would only say as the one downside is that the ambitions of the band sometimes are so demanding that they'd need a full orchestra to get this by in the way they envisioned it. This leads to making you think they never performed once live, but that is a trivial downside with an album this impressive. You have to be very wary when buying this album as unless you play it you won't be able to tell that there is a pressing flaw on some copies where the song "Girl On Fire" repeats twice and leaves off "The Capture Of Me" even though it is printed on the cover/disc. You really need to hear "The Capture Of Me" and so you have to play the first side at the beginning of the second track to know if you're getting screwed or not. That it is the only precaution with this one.
Condello were a project split between the songs of the late Micheal Condello who sang lead, played lead guitar, and keyboards and (lead!) bass guitarist/vocalist Ray Trainer. The two collaborated on a few while Bill Spooner (AKA Warren S. Richardson JNR and later in The Tubes) on guitar and Dennis Kenmore on drums rounded out the lineup. While Graffiti may have put me in touch with my intellectual ambitions Condello's music awakened my burgeoning sensuality. It would be painful to go into detail about that, so I won't say much about it as I was closeted in high school and my dreams, desires, and fantasies would have to wait till much later in life to come to the fore. The sliding, fat bottomed bass solos and bizarre structures where the descending bass solos take lead in "All You Need" and "The Other Side Of You" are the two tracks where Condello blow structure to ashes while the rest of the album goes all over the place in another way. Micheal's soft trembling voice has a lilting McCartneyeque quality. There are even some shades of Badfinger before Badfinger here which is a little frightening given the fate of both groups ended in the suicide of the leaders. I would definitely say that Micheal Condello sounds fragile, but he doesn't let that intrude on his superb songwriting which is just like the best psych sound of the mighty July or SGT. Pepper period Beatles and he certainly can blow your mind with his frenzied fuzztone guitar leads. Phase One is an Apt title- there is so much phasing on this record it sounds like if The Small Faces or John Lennon went mad with the effect! Play the put down "Oh No" or the psyched "Dr. Tarr Professor Fether" to someone who doesn't know this and they'll ask you where in England these guys came from! Condello, however, wanted to fool more than a few people so they take a few stabs at other things. "Crystal Clear" by Ray Trainer is a light feathery ballad that begins this album on a soft baroque pop note while "Keep It Inside" is a stark rural rock slow building number very much like Badfinger's "Take It All" in an earlier form. The only dud is the country/gospel Ray Trainer number "He'll Keep Waiting" although Micheal's screaming heavy metal closing track "It Don't Matter" is so harsh it can't be played with every listening regardless of the high voltage power of that track. He all of a sudden screams like a young Rod Stewart in the Jeff Beck Group while Robert Plant would love this and the dual guitar blasts will have you reeling. Now, all the bands/artists I've mentioned came after Condello, but Condello share with all of them a letting loose of a very sensual sound where you can feel the music grabbing at you trying to shake you into action. You want to make out while you're hearing the bizarre "All You Need" or way even trippier prog track "The Other Side Of You-" it's kind of frustrating that you can't. I'd let my mind and I still will let my mind run wild with this one, but that's all I'm gonna tell you as although I am now for the past decade + a proud out of the closet gay that is the furthest I'll go. My privacy is private, especially in a blog anyone can read. I am arch myself. If anyone tries to stand in my way or if I see any kind of intolerance I won't stand for it. Music can't be made by a prejudiced hateful heart and since I've said that numerous times about most heavy metal it needn't be expounded on anymore here. Condello and July aren't equals, July is the best psych record in the world bar none except The Koobas, but they share much in common. Condello is your American July. There are several American bands, in fact many American bands loved the British sound, that sound like July, but there's something higher here- something like a secret partnership between countries and artists exchanging ideas. Condello's Phase One is a warm, friendly record. Mike's fragility, his unsureness of himself don't demolish anything on offer here and rather make him a meatier version of what would turn into the singer songwriter movement of the 1970s. Much of that, in fact most of it is bullshit, but in England the singer songwriter could be a great one man way of demonstrating perfect pop. No one did it better than Clifford T. Ward, but unlike the tragic songs of Clifford Condello is closer to Emitt Rhodes or the also way ahead of the game psych masterpiece by Saint Steven on Probe (another firm favourite). This album may bounce all over the place, it may be very strange, even uncomfortable listening for some, but it's a solid masterpiece and I love it.

A LOOK BACK AND A LOOK FORWARD- MEMORIES AND EXPECTANCIES

2012-01-22T17:18:00.000-08:00

The more I think about my musical taste and many of my favourite bands/artists/records the most shocking thing is how long I have been intrigued by and have loved certain bands/artists/records who I can say I go back well over 15 or 16 years with. I really became a collector and a follower in high school which coincided with a revelatory trip to California- Namely Haight/Ashbury San Francisco. While most SF bands are nothing to write home about musically at all the hippy lifestyle was one that I could fit myself into at that age of 16. I grew my hair long- starting with a mod mop top and then moving to a full head of long wavy dark brown locks. For all of high school I dressed outlandishly, but usually with taste. It didn't stop with looks. I became very much an individual and started making my own decisions and avoiding conformity like the plague. I was very rebellious and outspoken, but also very warm and affectionate towards anybody I thought deserved my respect. I could be naive, but aren't we all at that age. I would walk around the school in my psychedelic gear and flaunt my love of all things 1960s, but I had a real hatred of drug abuse. I tried marijuana. I got high the first two times and then it became such a bummer and I saw so much damage happen to my friends that for high school onwards I stayed firmly drug free. I lost many of my friends because they would fry their brain cells on pot then go on to acid and hard drugs. They told me our friendship was worthless because I wouldn't score drugs for them or take drugs with them. I stuck to my rigid anti drug philosophy and watched some very bright young people turn into serious casualties of substance abuse. I made up my mind that if I was going to live out the the 1960s it would be the values I still hold today, the music, and the open mindedness are the spirit of that decade. Unfortunately, after high school finished it didn't take long for my life to unravel. I would partially blame myself and my own shortcomings, but really it was and is something I will never quite grasp how I became such a mean person at 20/21.
After the grim, horrible period of my early 20s around the age of 24/25 some things came back to life for me and I enjoyed a renaissance in rediscovering music and moving my life forward. I opened my mind to new ideas whilst looking fondly back at my "hippy" past. The most important thing musically was both to return to my musical roots and also to go forward. I still love all the classics of psychedelia- Kak, Gandalf, July, UK Kaleidoscope, The Parlour Band, Cream, Hendrix, The Doors first 2, Earth Opera you name it. The biggest upheaval against a musical mainstay would have to be a recent distaste for early Genesis because I way prefer Camel, Yes, King Crimson (although if you ask me Crimson were only great for two albums- Lizard and the first one In The Court Of The Crimson King). Genesis I don't hate, but I certainly think that I've lost interest in their brand of progressive rock. If there's ever a lowest ebb hit by a famous prog band it must be The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway although I could just as easily say everything by Gentle Giant and ELP was that bad. Perhaps in time I will go back to Foxtrot, Trespass, et all and find them just as intriguing as before, but as of now I just feel I need a rest from Gabriel's abrasiveness. One thing I'll say for Genesis- they really worked hard on their music and they toured all over England and Europe to make it. It would take till after Peter Gabriel left for their commercial breakthrough to really hit, but when they had him he was quite a spectacle. I related to him. I still do. An introvert in extrovert's clothing. You could say that Jim Morrison was an introvert who was extroverted too, so I found it easy to identify with someone who on the surface was flamboyant and beneath that very private. If I didn't want to be bothered back then I wouldn't make a big deal of it usually I just would withdraw.
I suffered periods of severe depression and it was only music that brought me out of it. Music has always been for me the greatest invention there is for self-expression and sound-alchemy. I go back way further than high school with bands like UFO because that kind of really charging yet ultra melodic rock could always bring the fight back to me and make me take on the world again. Also, a little before high school, but more so over the coming years The Kinks would become my favourite band. Ray and Dave Davis are for me even bigger than Lennon and McCartney and that's a tall order. Ray Davis is the most perceptive, most sympathetic, most advanced songwriter of the 20th century. Big words, but that is a fact. He practically created the most arch British kind of British rock that would lead to some of the most impressive songwriters to follow him such as the miraculous Roy Wood. Roy Wood would be my other fave. I've been listening to The Move for over half my life and if ever a band could follow in the wake of The Kinks with something EVEN MORE BRITISH then it must have been Roy and pals. While Roy was making millions another budding songwriter wasn't making anything- Jeff Lynne. Of course that all would change come Electric Light Orchestra who I will stand by to the end, but back in the Birmingham pop psych group The Idle Race his revolutionary combination of Beatles and Music Hall wouldn't yield even one hit. Spread across their first two albums The Birthday Party (1968) and Idle Race (1969) is a kind of melding of The Beatles with The Kinks, but a unique take on the lives of troubled and insecure people in England. He and Roy Wood openly wrote about mental illness and depression in a way that could be both comical and poignant. I could always find something deeper than just the wonderful whimsy in their writing. When Jeff Lynne left The Idle Race and joined admirer Roy Wood in The Move it was a whole different thing. The Move had always been heavy, very heavy, but with Jeff Lynne on board they took on Prog Rock. This would last for two albums of loud, melodic, bombastic, brilliant aural assault in Looking On and Message From The Country. It's enough to make one weep over good memories when I listen back to all these albums that have been in my life for so long.
In high school other things were happening to my personality that would be of much importance later in life beyond just music. We were handed All Quiet On The Western Front to read and that book together with a lot of bantering about military might or lack thereof would change my life. The tragic, pointless suffering of the soldiers grieved me very much, but I also began to view soldiers not as adversaries as I had before high school, but as potential friends. I can remember like yesterday the war in the former Yugoslavia and how horrible that was. During the reading of All Quiet.. or just after I witnessed a British soldier of the then Cheshire Regiment sobbing over the discovery of mass graves on the news. I felt a calling to go help and comfort him and the other soldiers fully knowing this was impossible. I wondered about what would make boys not much older than my then age of 16 join an Army and fight. My friends and I talked often about soldiers and we all wanted to go over to Yugoslavia and pitch in. It was weird to have a belief so at odds with the countercultural take, but I felt it gave me a multifaceted identity. However, if somebody told me that years later some of the best times of my life, some of the most wonderful conversations, and some of the closest allies I have would be with British soldiers I don't think I would have believed them. One must have several interests and an open mind- otherwise you'll become anachronistic. You can't live in the past and this is something I am finally beginning to learn. As much as I love thinking of those happy youthful years you have to mature. Now I am open to anything. If somebody wants to be my friend I'm a little more cautious unless I have reason to let my guard down because it feels like the other person is completely honest, but I'm also much more caring about other people than just my own needs in a relationship. I believe in love and I would say I always did. It was for me the music, the protests against war and injustice, and the belief in the power of love that made the 60s for me- not the drugs. I am resolutely anti drug and also resolutely anti Bigotry. Take each person as they come as an individual and DO NOT generalize about anyone who may be less wealthy or of a different background or colour than you. I wish that racism would disappear. I also wish that people would not become so set into a narrow view that they can't move forward with their life. Give and receive. Have a past you can smile about, but be sure to have a future that will bring you even more joy than the past while you have a strong foundation for your present. I have come to know all these things and hope you can too.

Funky Puzzle Tree And Other Assorted Rubbish How Not To Make It In The World Of Music And Society

2012-01-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

Rap is CRAP with the "C' taken out so funk its predecessor must certainly be referred to as junk spelled differently. The funny thing with funk is that it DOESN'T have to be bad and stranger all the more it is some white bands who have used the kind of slaps in the grooves of funkiness to make it into something worthwhile and worth listening to. I will freely and readily admit that I hate all Parliament/Funkadelic and that I see the only saving grace of that garbage as some of the fine guitar solos from Eddie Hazel. Eddie Hazel, though, is another Hendrix protege and far from the best. I'd give the best to somebody who can write songs as Jimi knew how to come up with some pretty amazing structures for his explosive guitar pyrotechnics. Prince took a surface level only dig at Hendrix and just gave us throwaway pop, funk, and misguided attempts at some kind of sweet soul with dirty sexually explicit lyrics. At the time it was outrageous and exciting, but it certainly has not aged well. Bad people have an equally bad tendency to latch onto something because they think it will make them cool and tough and superior to listen to it or watch it or do it when all they will end up doing is to become unbearable parasites. I know the type well. They think they know everything and you can't teach them a damned thing so don't even try to have a normal polite conversation with them because they're too cool for you. They aren't cool at all. They're just obnoxious losers trying to prove to themselves and the world that beating heads in solves a problem or being rude, callous, and selfish is the way to be. No way at all. I used to think of this as primarily a parasitic Jewish male disease, but can see that while it's a lot of that it can be anybody so you can't make rash generalizations. I've talked enough about metal and metal is another kind of clique that people will dive into joining when they are missing out on the best hard rock/metal just because AOR is a dirty word. I don't understand this and I never did. People have been obnoxious towards my overtly eclectic taste when in truth I KNOW and I CAN APPRECIATE ANY KIND OF GOOD MUSIC.
Funk doesn't have to be P Funk. I never could get into any of their stuff and just saw it as more Sly And The Family Stone trashy fake soul garbage. However, the first efforts to fuse soul with what would be funk yielded some classics. There's only one James Brown and at his least histrionic he was a true soul God. And not to forget the other greats like Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and Steve Winwood. Winwood turned the rock world upside down. He was a prodigy and his very sweet vocals were never icky sweet- he truly is about the greatest we have for soulful voiced rock and the artist all soulful vocalists should model themselves after along with Joe Cocker. Traffic began on a really brilliant note. They played psychedelic rock with R&B Mod overtones which was pretty unusual sounding- quite special. Unfortunately, come their 2nd album Traffic started moving into funk especially Dave Mason whose "Feeling Alright" is one of my very least favourite songs ever. This kind of disease to make more money than music would give us the horrid country plod rock of The Band and the smarmy histrionics of Blood Sweat & Tears. In the early 70s the music scene became flooded with horrendous imitations of both these said groups destroying the hopes of many a collector fooled by a great debut or an eye catching sleeve. On the other hand, music started to take off for far more adventurous territory with progressive rock/underground rock coming into play to combat the drivel that was top 40 radio at that time. However, even not all that was garbage. There is something about the perfect 3 minute pop single that can't be matched by anything else. A song like "Early In The Morning" or "Hitchin' A Ride" by the brilliant Vanity Fare or the clever perfection of all the material performed by Sweet at their best is to be looked at as the most perfect music in the world. Sweet would move on to progressive pop and eventually along with Electric Light Orchestra redefine radio hits. Sweet and Badfinger are two bands with tragic histories particularly the latter, but when looked at just for their music it will live beyond the tragedy and last forever.
In the 1970s pigeonholing became a really serious disease. It has lasted all the way since then right into the present. Radio and media want it all to be black and white and so does their Hollywood view of music. Music critics like Dave Marsh, Jon Landau, Robert Christgau would destroy rock and roll if they could, but thankfully there are people like me who don't give a fuck about cliques, critic's pens, and what we are force fed by major music publications. The worst thing you can do for yourself and music is to take life too seriously and take music too seriously. Come on and just have fun with it. Listen to what you love don't care what other people or those critics think.
England/Europe and America have always had a language barrier when it comes to music or rather a culture barrier. I can see all the music for what it's worth and what it is, but in America narrow mindedness and funk fetching idiocies dominate the culture, the country, everything. The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal scarcely made a dent in America. Patriotism is a plague and so the same mistake made during the British Invasion increased into even more of a disease. During the heyday of British Rock 1966 to 1980 bans were put on British Bands touring the States. Everyone trashed the British and Europeans leaving us with funk garbage, Bruce Springsteen, and the deplorable NRBQ. I know better than to buy into any of that nonsensical poppycock. If a band from the UK or Europe had a hit in the States in the 60s or 70s it led to a panic. If a band from England wanted to tour America they'd run right headfirst into a brick wall. Some Americans didn't like this. If a British band was their main influence they'd wear it on their sleeve just to spite the critics. This is the upside. The downside is that back then American rock needed nurturing that could have been helped by the outside, but it couldn't get it. When the polarization between teenybopper and AM radio shlock, bad "progressive" rock radio, and a quagmire of commercialization VS Progressive happened the end result was if you were a good quality band in the States before the Pomp/AOR era you were doomed. When the likes of Styx and Journey came along it was so relieving. To add to that Toto were a band who during their best years could bridge the gap between smooth creamy commercial AOR and even White Funk! So it could work. This whole thing with funky rock being done the right way is really an art. The fallout of R&B/Funk/Soul artists who had a brilliant crossover hit in the 80s was dreadful. So many wonderful artists just disappeared completely after their one or two great hits. I'm thinking the likes of Sade and Billy Ocean where Sade would try many times for a comeback that fell on deaf ears with MR. Ocean now currently in the "What happened to the guy" file. "Caribbean Queen" is a classic- I would love to hear it again after all these years. Lionel Ritchie was someone who began as funk and then in his solo career switched gears to smooth soul, but though it seemed his fame would last forever the inevitability of changing times left him with about 5 or 6 years of glory and that was that. Rock artists like Glass Tiger and The Cutting Crew made some of the best music ever, but for sustainable success it just didn't last after that one moment in the spotlight. A band like SHY or Magnum got caught right in the trap of poor promotion in America and this would damage the former more than the latter. Magnum unconditionally hate Americans which isn't a good thing, but at least it has made their English/European success everything they could wish for. At the end of a long hard slogging around trying to fit all these disparate things together my conclusion can only be this is a ruthless game- you probably won't win it and if you join the self-satisfied self-serious crowd then stay out of my life. There isn't room for funk done poorly in it and there most certainly is no room for the closed minded. Open your mind, open your world. Turn on to music not drugs, tune in, but don't ever drop out because you can't get through to people. It's you who matters in the end.

It's Time For BREAKFAST So Come On People Lick The RUSTIX Spoon!

2012-01-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

Two new discoveries for me. And you can find these albums for not a whole lot of money and if you give them the chance they deserve to have you'll be rewarded a lot more than with many $$$ albums. In fact, it is the really good obscure stuff and deals you can grab at a good price that stay permanently in my collection along with some big ticket ones, but the shelf life of really expensive albums is a bit too short in my musical world of trading and listening. I no longer have Spermull, Rag I Ryggen, or Silberbart and that's just a few to be mentioned in the traded list. This is not to say I am downsizing or downgrading my collection by any means, just that sometimes I let go of things that have a high value on the collector's circuit for other collectable and often just fun obscure greatness.
Breakfast, like the first meal of the day, are up first and are kind of a unique band that I got for Xmas and was dying to have. I had seen them described as a rural early Kayak which is an odd cross by any means and to be honest I hear more of a pronounced soul influence, lots of California rock vibes, and NO KAYAK IN HERE AT ALL. It took me a few spins with this one. Their one album It's Time For Breakfast was released by this German sextet in 1976 on the Sky label- which is a hit and miss progressive label from the mid to late 70s primarily. Breakfast are not at all progressive unless I were to use that word very loosely as I do for Ecology by French Canadian band 25th Regiment or some other bands who have clever song structures, but no long tracks or drawn out solos. Breakfast have a tight, crisp, and melodic sound that emphasizes the guitar over keyboards and meaningful lyrics that often are also very upbeat or with a message as in "Starlight" which tells of a musician's rise to glory and fall back down to the dregs after a bout with arrogant nose-thumbing to all his friends who got him to the top. The sound here is extremely pastoral and cheerful with a very American LA rock sound that you wouldn't be surprised to hear from Player, Couchois, or the Eagles even, but much better than the Eagles. Closer to the Aussie/American soulful rock mix of Player and Scotsmen Blue than Eagles or Firefall this album is very warm and charming and you find yourself wanting to hear these melodic songs such as "Needing You" or "Let Me Love You" again once you get the taste for how unprogressive and completely wholly polar opposite Heavy Teutonic rock these guys are. I know nothing of this band, but I don't think they resurfaced in any other outfits and this album is a definite one off. Most German bands were one offs in the 70s. If they made more than one album it wasn't surprising for there to be a drop off in quality after the first, second, or third records (See Eloy and Epitaph). That said, I always wish a group like this could have been given a chance at making another record just to hear what direction they would have taken their music in.
Breakfast are essential if you're a fan of Westcoast styled melodic fuzzy guitars of which there is a huge amount circling around the song structures and adding some spice to the tight airy harmonies. The lead voice is strong, confident, and yet very laid back and friendly sounding. They occasionally remind me of a way, way improved Panta Rei from Sweden if that band didn't have poor vocals and only 5 drawn out tracks on their album. There are 10 tracks on It's Time For Breakfast and only the bluegrass come folkrock pop bubblegum of the closing track "Tramp" is a filler. That leaves us with 9 excellent tunes full of strong melodies and brilliant guitar work. There are some abrupt shifts in tempo and key, but aside from that the word "Progressive" doesn't quite work here. It's funny to hear something this upbeat and commercial coming out of Germany at a time when that country had become immersed in music that was arch its own unique influences and straying away from earlier flirtations with British and American overtones. Some German groups still sounded like they were taking England as a serious influence, but apart from Lake Breakfast are the most American sounding German band I've ever heard. That isn't a bad thing at all on this album as their influences sound like prime era sunny Coast rock and there never was anything wrong with that. Cheerful melodies and soulful overtones sit happily side by side with catchy Club band grooves to create an AOR leaning album of great melodies and excellent songs. A rare, but usually cheap record well worth tracking down.
I've often wondered what The Koobas would have sounded like had they been from the States. It's an odd thought to have as The Koobas are among the very most British of British heavy/melodic psych and despite lots of Koobas echoes in other bands I can't really think of any other band who nailed the kind of subtle funkiness, earthy hard rock, and high humoured psychedelia quite as well as these Liverpool heroes. The Koobas were a band who drew on soul, psychedelic, beat, pop, and hard rock influences to create the ultimate British psych masterpiece- an album outclassed by none. Every time I'd search for some homegrown American equivalent I would come up with a band who lacked at least one of the Koobas key components. Is it that our only humour is Zappa? I don't know myself. Well, Rustix on their second album Come On People answered that question. This album is a minor heavy/beat/soul/funky psych/rock masterpiece and buy it right away no matter whether you like any or all of the influences I've just mentioned. The humorous element is here alright, but not overt. In the track "Hey Mose" against Koobas alike hard edged fuzz guitars there is a lot of humour about people who are grouchy and take everything way too seriously which the band say they call "Mose." I don't know where that comes from, but it doesn't make a difference as these guys can do everything you need to do to make a great album all very well. The music is loud, passionate, melodic, catchy, thoughtful, cooking at a high temperature, and really gets into some killer grooves while avoiding dreaded white funk. For instance, the funk comes out a few times, but not in that stupid P Funk way, more in the way of the Koobas if they'd been less ill-advised with their version of "Piece Of My Heart." Rustix do it brilliant style on two long rearranged soul standards- "Do Right Woman Do Right Man" and "Hard To Handle." These are the only covers here, but Rustix are clever enough lads to really take them somewhere else and that's a damned hard thing to accomplish when you're competing with two of the greatest standards in any kind of music. "Do Right Woman" was made famous by Aretha Franklin when she twisted the standard around, but here the twisting around is to avoid doing this song like its a soul standard and instead making it into a slow burning sexy swaggering persuasive psych slow cooker. It's great. The vocals throughout the album are strong, solid, controlled, and very appealing with excellent lead and harmony work. The rhythm section have real firepower as demonstrated by an all round superb production job and when it comes to writing songs that span that Koobas melodic psych/hard rock/prog/pop/funky rock kind of eclecticism gone to an American band with Mod Soul overtones this is one of the best releases of the burgeoning underground scene of the early 70s. "Hard To Handle" is a song I cringe at covers of. It was bad done by The Black Crows as a hit and my motto is usually if it ain't Otis Redding don't even try to fuck with doing it. Poor Otis never would have had so many miserable cover versions if he had lived. He wouldn't have stood for it. Here Rustix excel again. A Latin percussion driven cool groove sets the pace for a high humoured and fun take on the song with no white soul posturings. It's instead just a good get down and with it grooving heavy easy solid sound. This version is driven by congas, timbales, strong yet not overconfident vocals, and more fine fuzz guitar. So with two excellent covers comes the question of the original material and I say it's no question at all. Every song on here is great. The originals show an eclectic intelligence, sense of fun, and excellence rarely heard on American records that straddle the line between late 60s commercial and early 70s harder psych rock. There's plenty of grit and driving wild fuzz guitar in a disciplined manner and also a lot of variety. Each track tries something different. If you give this album a chance it will likely for you become a fave if you have the same openness towards new things that I have. It's got a bit of that magic "Royston Rose" Koobas vibe and you can't beat that. Find it and give it a few spins to treasure another great one on the Rare Earth label which gave us some excellent music in the 1970-1972 era. 'Nuff Said.

ANGEL- A LIFETIME OF GREAT MUSIC STILL UNDERRATED- MY JOURNEY WITH THEM

2012-01-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

To Mickey Jones- Rest In Peace.
My story with the band Angel is a long and complex one and when I think of how long it took me to appreciate them and also how long I've been a huge follower of their music it's staggering. One long, really wild, and really rewarding ride.
Angel get way too much adverse press and stupid insults just because they didn't make it as big as Kiss and because truth be told they were heavier, much more bombastic, and their music was/is so heavily British leaning that you could fool just about anybody into thinking Angel were not an American band if you played them for them. I have nothing against Kiss, but it typically stupidly seems that everyone thinks it's an "Either Or" you can't have it both ways. Kiss are great for what they do, but their rock and roll heavy rock boogie party time music just always leaves me wanting the darker, richer, more varied, and more adventurous pomp/progressive/metal/power pop sound of Angel.
Kiss never scared me. The blood spewing Gene Simmons with the huge tongue just made me laugh. Their music was always just about sex and throwing a great big party not that there's anything wrong with that, but I hungered for something else.
Having heard Angel's first album (Self Titled from 1975) the first time back in 1988 it was like my first experience with Diamond Head. I was terrified by it. This was the heaviest, hardest, most take-no-prisoners emotionally high charged music ever and I had only heard Giuffria- the horrid spin-off band formed by keyboard wizard Greg Giuffria who much later on in life I found out to be one of the kindest, nicest, and most warm and friendly people you could ever talk to. Before getting into Angel I had heard Giuffria because of their not massive, but pretty substantial success in the 80s. Listening to them and the even worse, horrible House Of Lords it's bound to sound scary when you go from a deep yet non threatening singer like David Glen Eisley in Giuffria to the always high pitched sometimes all out devastating powerful voice of Frank Dimino.
Come Christmas of 1989 things were changing big time. I had become disillusioned with Kiss and had finally begun to develop a love for Angel. That Christmas I got the band's 2nd album Helluva Band as a present and I also magically learned how to draw. For my inspiration as an artist I thank 3 bands- Procol Harum, Angel, and Yes. I could add in the Scorpions and my beloved UFO too. These bands gave me courage, inspired me, made me try my hand at things I thought I couldn't do, and saved my life.
All of the above have stayed with me throughout my life, but that band here of the most importance in this entry is the mighty Angel.
Like Kiss Angel were around for a long time before Angel even happened. Singles and full length albums had been released. Dimino together with Giuffria, Mickey Jones (who died of cancer several years ago) on bass, Punky (Edwin Lionel) Meadows on guitar, and drummer Barry Brandt had all cut their teeth since the 1960s. Angel formed in Washington DC bringing together Frank Dimino from Boston and Punky Meadows from Virginia and were, like Kiss, something of a paid-our-dues supergroup. Taking their inspiration from Yes, Deep Purple, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath yet without copying any of the above Angel's first album hit the racks in 1975. At this stage the band were about to launch their outlandish never equaled stage show and image of white silk suited bombast, but the pictures in the inner sleeve showed the five of them in street clothes.
Angel's first album took me the longest. It's heavy metal with strong pomp and progressive rock inclinations and is way more of a prog/metal hybrid than Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Queensryche or any of that bullshit. Angel took the high pitched metallic wailing of Frank Dimino and the talented vocalist merged this with some softer Jon Anderson alike vocals to great effect. Also a key component to Angel's unique sound is the over-the-top heavy guitar and keyboard attack with lush progressive and thick toned Blackmore inspired guitar from master axeman Meadows. The album kicks off with two 7 minute epics "The Tower" and "Long Time" with both songs combining edge-of-your-sear intensity with beautiful melodic passages. Mellotron and synthesizers soar around the unpredictable tempo changes while the guitars cut deep with powerful solos and also add a firm foundation to Angel's songs.
There is a bit of both sides of Angel on their first 3 records. After the third On Earth As It Is In Heaven which may be my favourite Angel became a Godlike Power Pop/Pomp/AOR band. They would go on to make two of the most influential albums in this genre with White Hot and Sinful, but more on those later.
The first Angel albums mainly dealt with battles and English folklore- something so far removed from America that anyone could have mistaken them for a British band who would steal the crown from even the highest of progressive rockers Yes, Crimson, Genesis. The sometimes menacing lyrics and gripping sophistication could go from beautiful melodic passages and songs like the classic "Mariner" or Helluva Band choice cut "Feelings" to some of the darkest, heaviest, most over-the-top menacing molten hard prog ever. The peak songs for frightening power would be on the transitional On Earth...
with "Cast The First Stone" (about The Crusades or Medieval wars in general) and "Just A Dream" (about nightmares) while Helluva Band for much of the album found Angel dealing in all-out metal early Judas Priest or Deep Purple style with progressive flourishes. On their first 3 albums Angel finally honed progressive rock keyboards, strong soaring vocals, brilliant melodies, and virtuoso playing from all into songs that could be listened to over and over they are so special. They never went off into overlong solos and if a solo was long it usually had a purpose as on the grim tale of a Medieval hanging "The Fortune."
With two solid albums released and a stage show no-one could match Angel should have owned half the world. Unfortunately, the press would attack them throughout their career and the record sales of the first two were only moderate. Clearly sensing that they had gone as far ignoring potential great singles they could go some heavy changes appeared on On Earth As It Is In Heaven. This album drew from a strong Beatles inspiration with more nods to Britannia, but killer power pop songs like "She's A Mover," "That Magic Touch" which is simply beautiful, "You're Not Fooling Me," and the hit "Telephone Exchange" had so much melodic splendor as to make even McCartney, Roy Wood, or Jeff Lynne blush. A Left Banke/Baroque influence also came into play in a big way and with the perfect balance between pomp/pop heaven and heavier tracks Angel had now reached a real high point in their career musically.
On Earth.. had been a transition. Angel were about to drop the progressive Yes inspirations for all out power pop. Replacing Mickey Jones with Felix Robinson on bass and with Dimino no longer handling all of the backing vocals White Hot was released in 1978 and what an album it is. This is power pop/pomp rock at an absolute zenith- yet there still is that Angel uniqueness to it all. The Beatles influences come through in a big way and the melodic wall of sound that would come to be another Angel trademark got there before any other AOR band could even come within a hair length of Angel's brilliance. Every song is masterful, but still the sales just weren't giving Angel enough of the huge success labelmates Kiss were having. Sensing that their time was running out just as it had for The Zombies before ODDESEY AND ORACLE and The Koobas before them, Angel put everything they had into the masterful, amazing, and best power pop record ever made Sinful.
Sinful would also be released yet quickly taken off the market as Bad Publicity with the title meant as a swipe against the obnoxious music critics who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, but there is nothing mean spirited about this wonderful album. Songs like "Don't Take Your Love," "You Can't Buy Love," and the majestic closing track "Lovers Live On" are melodic rock heaven. The whole album was very commercial with no heavy lyrics and no screaming pyrotechnics from Frank Dimino, but the commercial overtones were no problem with soaring melodies, great playing, and a wonderful production job that made Angel shine like a power rock American Electric Light Orchestra or Pilot especially. Angel knew this was either gonna make them the stars they so rightfully deserved to be or it was going to be their swan song. Unfortunately, no hit singles came off the album which is staggering. Time was running out for them and although they still could draw crowds and they still had a huge cult following that wasn't what Angel needed. They had set out to conquer the world of Anglophile progressive/pomp and then just as English power pop. They had made the highest quality music ever recorded by an American band over their releases, yet the end was in sight and it was a sad loss when after the live double set Live Without A Net Angel were history.
Like bands before them and after them Angel would receive much praise, gain many new followers, and would be cited as a heavily influential band after their time had come and gone, but for me personally I'd like to say that Angel have an effect on me like no other band and they have helped me through both some of the worst times in my life and also I've shared some of the highest heights of joy with them. Angel are about the music. Angel are about love. Angel are a band no one can ever equal and anything said against them is a lie. Angel- you may not have made the record books with album sales, but you've made them with something much more important- very high quality music.

AN ORIENTAL NAME, BUT A SWISS BAND CHINA ROCKS

2012-01-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

In the mid to late 80s in Europe and just about everywhere there were an overwhelming number of glam/melodic metal/melodic hard rock bands eager to catch the same bus to success that had propelled Europe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Dokken to superstardom. Some of these bands had their own very distinctively different take on melodic hard rock and surpassed many of the ultra successful "hair" bands. The two best from my point of view are Treat from Sweden and Skagarack from Denmark- both bands had killer songs and a really fresh take on riff and melody ready hard hitting melodic rock. Why, even Steve Perry himself couldn't sound more perfect than Skagarack's masterful mastermind Torben Schmidt who clearly was highly influenced by Perry's melodic Sam Cooke impressions. Treat came across with a similarly melodic and somewhat more dangerous sounding attack and a full on glam image that would have made even Motley Crue and Poison really afraid about losing their record contract. While Crue and Poison played faceless, derivative, unprofessional copies of 70s glam best left to the masteful Sweet and Slade Treat were and are just as serious about their music as their image. Yes, these bands both of whom I'll discuss in depth soon are the best.
The worst? Remarkably some of the more popular bands I really have an issue with. Winger always got on my nerves. I couldn't believe such an ugly and idiotic guy could go so far. Warrant were far from the worst- in fact they always were better than they were given credit for. Poison and Motley Crue would be down near the bottom, but nobody could be worse than the two worst bands ever formed- TNT and Return. Both bands hailed from Norway although TNT's whining screechy voiced Tony Harnell came from America. TNT still record with the undeserved addition of Harnell swapped for Shy's brilliant Tony Mills. TNT managed to go pretty far- they were championed by MTV, but they were all whimper and no bang. Guitar drool fool Ronni (Rolf Amrid) Letekkro is without doubt the worst failure ever to pick up the instrument and certainly if TNT were supposed to be any heavier than White Lion forget it.
Return were something different. They were a 4 man band from Norway who could play just fine and who were a sort of melodic metal hybrid, but what makes them the worst are their viciously graphic and morbid lyrics which owe more to Dark Metal than melodic rock and a particularly lame lead singer.
Clearly we can't all be winners can we? Mostly I love this music. I find it a nice little niche to curl up in when I'm in the mood for something hard rockin' yet with all the melodic elements firmly in place. China lie somewhere in the middle and are a bit of a curiosity in that they were slated for stardom, but it never came to be. China's first bad decision was their band name. I don't know why a hard rock band from Switzerland would call themselves China and I don't mean that as a knock against the Country or the band I just find the name strange. It doesn't sound believable for a hard rock group who are hailing from Europe. There really are two Chinas- there never has been such a huge makeover in so short a period as what happened to the band between their first album in 1988 and their followup Sign In The Sky in 1989.
More on that now. I expected China to be THE BEST having heard two killer cuts off their debut and two more off Sign In The Sky. China's first lineup was built around the fierce dual guitar attack of Claudio Matteo and Freddy Laurence, the steady heavy bass of Marc Lynn, and John Dommen's excellent drumming. However, the showstopper was lead vocalist Math Shiverow. At a time when Krokus were on their way out China if they just had had a US release and a little more knack for melody could have become Switzerland's major import to hard rock and chased Krokus out of the running. There was much help from that band and with Krokus guitarist and main writer Fernando Von Arb contributing the brilliant melodic rock anthem "Back To You" China weren't Chinese- they were all the way European. Shiverow had a high pitched voice that didn't scream it just soared. He took the band to heights of brilliance on the best tracks and even on the few in between to middling more metallic ones he gave them an edge that most bands would die for. The production on the band's self-titled debut by veteran guitarist Dirk Steffens of the excellent band Tollhouse (more of a melodic soul/rock AOR sound from the late 70s) is excellent and the European edge is exotic. Most of the songs are very good. The guitars are tasteful and zoom around the hard hitting music. Highlights are "Back To You," "Wild Jealousy," "Hot Lovin' Night," and the rollicking opener "Shout It Out" is pretty heavy- I'd say heavier than most straight metal. A little nurturing and a little more time and these guys could have made their next one a masterpiece. Shiverow was really one hell of a great singer with the brilliance of the best. If they'd kept him and gone a little more melodic than metal look out. That wasn't to be....
Greedy for more recognition outside their homeland, possessed to change with the hair metal trend of 1989, out of luck, or just plain wrong in their decision Shiverow and Lynn were gone by the time Sign In The Sky came about and replaced by an American I'd guess in Patrick Mason as vocalist and a different Swiss bassist. Whenever a band go through a major change that major change is a major gamble. Many one off bands have that question of "what would the second have been like" or "wish they'd made another record." With China I think I'd rather if this were the direction they were to go in to have changed the name of the band. That is how drastic a change there is here. Patrick Mason lacks charisma. His voice is one of those very American very attitude fueled voices where the perfectness is too clean and the emotion doesn't shine through enough. He can sing and there is no doubting that, but he doesn't have personality. Occasionally his vocals are bad and get on my nerves- too much Axl Rose and too much Poison all at once is never gonna work as on the hideous yet hilariously bad "Animal Victim." He means to say "I'm Tough I'm Cool I'm Nobody's Fool," but a fool he sure is on that track and some of this album. Let's not lay all the blame on him, however. In fact with the huge shoes to fill and the clarity of Mason's voice he does a stellar job and on the best tracks such as "In The Middle Of The Night," "Second Chance," "Take Your Time," and the beautiful finale "So Long" as well as a magnificent title track this album could have been great. No, do not blame Patrick Mason for a hugely uneven record. The problem is a lack of focus which was also a less irritating problem on the first album, but made much worse here as many of the tracks sound like carbon ripoffs of every L.A metal band who had made the charts that year. There is a tendency towards too much show and too little substance. Manager/Producer/Co-writer of all the tracks Stephan Galfas does a horrible job in the production seat. He makes China sound pushed into a box rather than a studio and I would compare the rankness of the production, the depressing come down after brilliant recording to the infamous disasters of Goodnight L.A the one bad Magnum record and Misspent Youth the one bad Shy album. However, unlike those two Sign In The Sky isn't a complete catastrophe. As I said some of the album is quite good, but I always feel a bit let down by it. The worst thing here along with the production is the horrendous guitar wanking. Never have I heard such a drastically wrong move on the part of musicians as I hear on this album. Neither Laurence OR Matteo is on his game and rather the two of them go off the rails on horrid speed and noise soloing that makes me think of all those here one day gone in a flash idiots who came after Yngwie Malmsteen, but this is clearly much worse. The bands and the guitarists China are ineptly emulating are George Lynch/Dokken and Warren DiMartini/Ratt. With a musician as high of stature as George Lynch I would say if you ain't Steve Harris of Shy don't even give it a try. Forgotten are the melodic structures and the tunefulness of Lynch's playing and in its place is just a lot of pinch-harmonic whammy bar noise. I could laugh, but I feel too sickened by all of it too. There are bad mistakes that are funny, but China's mistakes are all sad. I really wish that the band had thought about the consequences of what they were gonna do and spared us much of this album, but rather typically on the good tracks the playing is good too. This is real mixed record- a real hit or miss effort where when the songs are good they are great and when they are bad I feel sickened by it. China were never gonna make it with something this derivative and the production throughout sucks. I will say it that bluntly. The production is so bad, so empty, so over the top lame that China should have fired Galfas or never have had the lack of knowledge to employ him not just as producer, but as manager and co-writer. While some of this album is still so good it can survive one track springs to mind that seems to put the disturbing spin on what was afoot- "Don't Ever Say Goodbye." This track sums up China's decision- they don't want to be Swiss anymore they want to be American. They don't want to write songs they want to write product. It's all about how it can be marketed and not about music. I feel that around half this album is saved, The other half of it is so much rubbish I wouldn't recommend wasting your time. I am reminded of the staleness that crept in after the rush of inspiration in 1986/1987 when by 1991 everything changed for the worst and Grunge came right in and killed rock and roll. Blame albums like this.
So in my final assessment of China I'd say they were a band who also attended the melodic hard rock marathon, but sure as Hell Treat and Skagarack way beat them to the finish. China began as a band where they could have been front-runners and they could have been on that magical level, but they made all the wrong choices and what we are handed is so foul we ask to take it off the plate and only save the half of the album that isn't spoiled. Very sad, but very typical of a time and the changes in that time. They could have made the grade, but China fall short.

A LOVING TRIBUTE TO DIAMOND HEAD THE CREAM OF THE NWOBHM

2011-12-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

My taste in music varies around a lot. I began with softer rock as a child, but soon was leaning heavily towards the AOR sound of bands like Journey and Asia. Then back in the very beginning of my earliest interests in heavy metal there was one band who remain with me the most profound and highest of the entire New Wave Of British Heavy Metal- Diamond Head. I never was a "proper metal head." I hated most of what was supposed to be heavy metal and it was more hard rock I was drawn to- hard rock under the guise of "Heavy Metal." Think about it. Most "Metal" is contrived, machine-like, nasty, spiteful, arrogant, inept noise and not even music, but there was a time when you could be thrown under the banner of Heavy Metal and actually be very musical and passionate. There was no band more musical and more passionate than the Midlands legends Diamond Head. Formed in the mid 70s by Sean Harris (Lead vocals, guitar, percussion), Brian Tattler (Lead guitar, backing vocals), Colin Kimberley (Bass guitar, backing vocals), and Duncan Scott (Drums, percussion, backing vocals) Diamond Head worked their way up in the late 1970s from a small club band to an underground sensation. With early releases like the Diamond Lights EP and their masterful first album Lightning To The Nations (1980 private release) Diamond Head were clearly not your average metal band. Brian Tattler's guitar tone from the beginning of their career through their last proper album Canterbury wasn't the usual machine made distorted ineptitude of most metal. His clear, bell like tone and highly melodic complex solos could even be compared to the guitar sound of 1960s psychedelia like Quicksilver Messenger Service and his hard driving riffs had that same understated complexity. Add to that Sean Harris. He has the ultimate voice, a voice that most singers would die for, and his crystal clear wailing really sounded like a young Robert Plant singing, wailing, throwing it all into the ether from the heart not from the usual screeching poseur metal voice of the horrid Bruce Dickinson or the strained Biff Byford (Saxon). In fact, Diamond Head were more true New Wave Of British Heavy Metal than Iron Maiden or Saxon ever were, although Saxon began with some honest hard rock intentions. Diamond Head's music is hard rock, but heavier yet also more melodic. That is the sound of the NWOBHM- hard rock 70s style with an upgraded snarly edge. Along with Harris and Tattler who wrote Diamond Head's material their rhythm section could more than handle the changeable nature of the songs and played with precision, skill, intelligence, and sympathy to the material.
Diamond Head on first listening is something I will never forget. It really was a lesson in how much heavy metal is nothing more than a musical lie compared to what it was in the best of the NWOBHM and 70s bands. I was never scared by Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Skid Row, Wasp, any of those bands. They did nothing for me and Metallica I just never got. Lars Ulrich should have a medal when it comes to a true historian of heavy music. He loves the NWOBHM and he's turned a lot of heads in that direction. Unfortunately, Metallica can't cover a Diamond Head song like "Am I Evil" or "The Prince" without lapsing into the cold, mechanical, noisy more than musical inept thrash metal that typifies their music. I never liked Metallica because they sounded too much like a machine and were, truth be told, always more on the proto-grunge metal side like Nirvana than the kind of traditional metal I've always preferred. When I first heard Diamond Head's best album Borrowed Time (MCA 1982) all the way back at the age of 12 in 1988 I was terrified by it. I considered it the scariest music I'd ever heard and the effect of such dark material and so much emotion was something I'd never heard in metal. The mournful nature of the lyrics and plaintive howl of Sean Harris seemed so unearthly and so much like somebody who was really showing you a true kind of sorrow in his voice. The music is filled with deceptive changes, soaring completely unpredictable guitar solos, and the dark, literate, menacing horror movie come emotional storm lyrics of Sean Harris. I nearly fell on the floor at first hearing of this. I couldn't believe what I was getting myself into. It was a dark time for me full of a lot of pain and misery and the music of Diamond Head seemed to be belting out the exact same fear that I was trying to hide. I knew this wasn't your average metal. In fact, I couldn't really consider it metal. I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I'd never heard music like this in my life. At 12 and 13 it was too exotic for me, I couldn't get it.
I found myself fast becoming a Diamond Head devotee in 1989 towards the end of my first metal phase with the material on the dreadful sound quality job Behold The Beginning with the liner notes from Lars Ulrich explaining that the sound wasn't up to snuff. I had heard Lars and Metallica destroy both "The Prince" and "Am I Evil," but on hearing what those songs sounded like as by Diamond Head- amazing music it was. If you fast forward ages and ages later, however, it would be Borrowed Time and its follow up Canterbury which would be my faves by Diamond Head- especially Borrowed Time- the album that once scared me shitless.
I would not recommend the American pressing of Borrowed Time which is how I heard it first. They put the songs in the wrong order and dispensed with the lovely gatefold. Buy the British original press. Borrowed Time is an album that shows the best side of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and also that progressivism can peacefully coexist with heavy hitting hard rock- it ain't neo prog. Songs like the despair and yearning filled title track are so full of passion, soul, melody, and brilliant guitar work that they demand to be heard by anybody who loves music of all kinds. Diamond Head are a melodic band. Even "Am I Evil" which is their most famous song and also their most violent is a melodic, charging, galloping, emotional feast for the ears. While Diamond Head never would enjoy the huge success they deserved the same is true of all the best bands of the NWOBHM. It was a time of youthfulness and optimism where "Anything Goes" as Def Leppard would say and everything did go at full speed. The time of the greatest hard rock ever made since the heyday of the 60s and 70s may not have been long, only maybe a decade's worth, but bands such as Dedringer, Magnum, Bronz, Chevy, Dark Star, Marseille, Diamond Head who I'm writing about, Money, Quartz, Tytan, Lion, Lionheart, Tygers Of Pan Tang proved that rock and roll was something that could be immortalized on vinyl. Diamond Head got me interested, they got me to see things differently about music, and they also opened my mind to the possibilities of how the human voice could become a musical instrument like a vocal electric guitar. Sean Harris and Brian Tattler wrote a lot of amazing songs together and his voice was so sympathetic to Brian's guitar that it fell into place in an easy brilliant manner. I can come back to these songs, these hot and sweaty performances of letting it all out, and I can just soar with the music, focus entirely on everything there is going on that is so special about Diamond Head's sound.
For a band who took my mind and blew it into fragments then reassembled it I will love Diamond Head for an eternity. You should check out their music and FORGET the covers done by Metallica. Metallica were always only in it for the money and fame and lied about that. Diamond Head are all about one of their song titles off Canterbury "Making Music." Rock On Diamond Head- may your music be heard by more and more people every year who will learn the lessons from it that I learned.