Beta Males

These Records Were The Original Hidden Tracks.

Whenever I go to someone’s home, the first thing I do is check out their music collection. Your record and CD’s say more about you that what we can pick up on the street and will decide how long I will be staying. Cheap Trick? Yeah I’ll stay for a drink. The Dead Boys? I’m taking my shoes off. Dave Matthews? “THE PHONE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! GET OUT NOW!" Being able to hide some of your albums (in my mind) is one of the great arguments for records over compact discs. The more records you had, the more records you hid. Not bad records, just those from that musical purgatory populated by bands that played not so macho dress-up as well as music. While you may have filed your LP's in some order, if you were like me, you kept a stack out that were part of that week's heavy rotation. The records up front were there not only to listen to but to show off. These were the uber-cool records of the day or alpha male rockers that no one would question. So behind the safety of your "Clash at Shea Stadium" bootleg and Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" were a couple of choices that were lipstick on your music collar.

Androgyny for rock musicians was a statement of style that turned into an early marketing ploy to appeal to girls. In order to pry the baby-sitting money away bands went through eyeliner the way Adam Lambert goes through… well, eyeliner. Dolling yourself up to land in teen periodicals may sell records but inhibits your band’s ability to be taken seriously. Most bands are rockers at heart with a longing to be revered as drunken beat poets rather than be featured in Teen Beat magazine. The late ‘70’s was a macho affair with cock rock and punk in full swing. Still a few bands took the anti-macho route; looking to sneak out the back door with the girls while the tough guys slugged it out on the front lawn.

The Babys looked “teddy bear tough” thanks to soft focus album covers that would make Barbara Walters jealous. The band is a guilty pleasure that can best be described as the musical equivalent of sneaking a read of Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmo articles are a quick lexicon of what girls wish you would say to them (Isn’t that why they leave the Cosmo out?) and Babys songs could have been the earliest versions of an audio book. The Babys had an underappreciated ability for gender-speak translation and crafted some memorable songs using it. Unfortunately when your biggest hits are ballads it is hard to get men to buy into, let alone, understand what you are doing. Once you get past the sappy numbers there are some quality songs of love, anguish and lust that are framed by the powerful vulnerability of John Waite’s vocals and Wally Stocker’s tasty guitar hooks. The band’s inability to break though is quite honestly part of the appeal of The Babys to me because except in rare cases, success ruins the cool quotient. The Babys wanted to be stadium rockers from the get-go and tried to short cut their way through with the slow tempo numbers (Isn’t It Time & Every Time I Think Of You.) thus making a Babys record the only LP you would borrow from your sister.

Broken Heart, the title track from the band’s 3rd album is not what you would expect a Babys song about a broken heart to be. Any idea of whining is knocked down the stairs with a guitar and drum led bravado clueing you in that it’s not their heart that broken. A ruckus of initiation to club of empty pockets and disappointment of many men caused by a single woman, Waite does his best to comfort her latest victim by showing his own scar like a badge. Broken Heart rocks with the lesson that you cannot be truly healed until you transfer your pain to someone else.

Listen To The Babys "Broken Heart"

Angel was a band that never really caught on because you couldn’t describe the band to anyone without sounding sarcastic. “These guys rock-they wear white polyester outfits and have a couple of songs where they use a harpsichord!” As much as you would think that Angel started on a dare, they were actually discovered by Gene Simmons and were signed to Casablanca, the same label as Kiss, to be the heavenly Ying to the Kiss demonic yang. While never achieving the pandemic status their label mates had, Angel developed a small yet loyal fan base by providing an ambitious live stage show and showing up regularly in the glossy fan magazines by being way more photogenic than the sweaty bell bottomed blue collar rockers of the day.

Angel’s main gimmick was gimmicks. A 3-D logo for live shows, albums that were sneaky mirror images and hair that would make Fabio cry himself to sleep. One of the band’s most successful gimmicks was to give equal time to both guitar and keyboards, allowing them to separate what they did from the crunch rockers by utilizing the skill and showmanship of Gregg Guffria. The result was a balanced sound that gelled with the visual style of the band and was less dependant on riffs and hooks. A band will sometimes do its best work when they depart from whatever formula they use to create a song and Angel perform that trick here with “Can You Feel It.” The song begins not with guitar or keyboards but drums that tense up your ears for the explosion of the entire band including Frank DiMino’s vocals sung at the speed of someone giving directions in a getaway car. Like it or not, this is the very blueprint for the Sunset Strip rock bands of the 1980’s. Some might have dismissed Angel as pretty boys; however, they are more likely the Velvet Underground of glam metal. Not many people bought their records, but just about everyone that did formed a hair band.

Listen To Angel's "Can You Feel It"

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High-Ku

Drugs Can Assist The Creative Process, Providing You Stay On Them

Heroin is like a Mike Myers movie; no matter how many times it’s declared to be dead or how much bad press it gets, they keep making it and people keep showing up for a taste. Under closer inspection, smack seems to get bad ink because the only people that write about it are former users. Why are so many people cooking up when even USA Today can't find anything nice to say about heroin? Because getting high is supposed to open up the creative areas of your mind, but the hideous truth is that most "H" users use up all of their creativity just searching for new ways to score junk leaving the masses with nothing more than some empty notebooks and vomit. There are numerous songs about "horse", but for the most part a song about heroin is just like the song about a broken heart: It comes after the fact when your life is empty and your friends will have nothing to do with you. You went off the rails on heroin and bottomed out when you realized you couldn't make your own lunch. Fuck off prima donna. Clean up songs are for pussies who play the Half Time show at the Super Bowl.

In order to separate yourself from the average junkie when you write a song about drugs, don't tell me you took drugs and they fucked up your life; TELL ME WHY I SHOULD TAKE DRUGS! Share with me the secret about this forbidden bitch goddess that makes you want to come back again and again even though you have half a set of teeth and drink out of toilets. Spare me the inner freedom hippie bullshit. Convince me to shoot up by explaining that heroin is like cumming for 35 minutes without having to talk to anyone afterwards while staying nice and trim and do it with some loud guitar.

By being a deranged genius that saw life differently than most, then building poetic and musical world around that surreal vision, Jim Carroll was the Willie Wonka of heroin. 1980’s Catholic Boy was the golden ticket tour inside the candy factory using what every good con artist always has handy-language. Catholic Boy is grad school Punk Rock that is closer to French New Wave film than the maniacal slashings of NYC contemporaries like The Dead Boys, as it was packed with enough metaphors to keep even the most pretentious hipster busy through a whole pack of Clove cigarettes. The album is not solely about drug use; rather it shows us the landscape absorbed through the eyes of a junkie and hustler and broadcasts it in way to make you sympathetic to his self-induced pain. The album’s most well known song “People Who Died” is also its biggest flaw. The misleading punk angst kept many from digging deeper into one of the single finest music albums ever made. The band behind Carroll is the key as they act like a tail on a kite directing the lyrical poetry into a force of different velocities that enhance the heights of Carroll’s underbelly experience. "Wicked Gravity” is a poetry slam and slam dance combined. An attacking but at the same time slide stepping song about the weightlessness of addiction heavy enough to keep it grounded so it’s point stays at eye level. Just as junk will do, “Wicked Gravity” pulls you in and keeps you beautifully dog chained. Eventually everything comes back to earth because the longer you live out the heroin dream, the less of a myth it becomes. Jim Carroll succumbed to the gravity of existence, checking out on September 11, 2009.

Listen To "Wicked Gravity"

Conversely Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy carved out their heroin shooting rock band niche by taking clichés and brilliantly giving them a life of their own. Many people have written and performed songs about prison escapes but only Thin Lizzy had the balls to call it and actually make it sound like a “Jailbreak.” Ready to fuck or fight with a wink of his eye, Lynott was the motor behind the band as well as being its revered and inimitable front man who possessed the rare ability to craft the rock song of the working class with the lyrical insight of a broken hearted auteur. Under appreciation in the United States was partly brought on by their own doing-Lynott’s case of hepatitis (possibly caused by his use of heroin) forced Thin Lizzy to cancel what looked to be their career making 1976-’77 tour as the Jailbreak album was starting to take off.

1977’s Bad Reputation once again showed that Thin Lizzy could take formulaic subject matter and scare the fucking bogeyman with it. The title track to this record is simply one of the finest “I have it under control” records you will ever hear. The sonic menace of a back alley bruiser facing an intervention, Lynott snarls back at the chorus urging him to “turn yourself around” by filling you in that this not only the life he has chosen but he has worked hard to get to this low point, so he will sort it out his way. Recorded as a 3 piece, with the very underrated Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson on guitar and drums respectively, “Bad Reputation” spotlights the bulletproof feeling of having the mind working just enough to rationalize marginal decisions. Perfectly encasing what having a bad reputation entails: a hard surface with rage, passion and technical skill that can be summoned and administered before anyone can hit the panic button, Thin Lizzy did the impossible-they gave heroin a cool makeover. Phil Lynott cemented his bad reputation when his body finally gave way to years of abuse in January 1986.

Listen To "Bad Reputation"

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Comings And Goings

We're now back from the rain delay...

In honor of my own comings and goings that have kept me from creating any new 4 Minutes Of Fame music blog postings for a while; I am going to re-enter blogging by acknowledging a departure and arrival of 2 underground heroes of the vinyl record world:

The news of Willy DeVille's recent death ironically may have gotten past as many people as his music did. While not a media darling, DeVille had released of number of critically acclaimed records starting with the quasi-eponymous band, Mink DeVille that he fronted when he first made the scene. Mink DeVille were able to carve out a sonic space by embracing romance at a time (1977) when it was far cooler to hate than it was to love. The songs of Mink

DeVille were more than stories; they were urban handbooks for hitting on girls up the street and pulling a knife on their boyfriends down the block. More Latin and crooner influence than nihilistic Bowery in the music, Mink DeVille and later on, Willy's solo work carried that elusive lover's edge that gave his pining lyrics the believability to convince your heart to do, what common sense refused to.

I offer as a headstone two selections to a fallen troubadour: "Venus Of Avenue D" beautifully captures the prowling streetlight shaded canvas of Mink Deville as a band and Willy Deville's romantic swagger without using 1st year theatre major over emoting. 1983's "Each Word's A Beat Of My Heart" is a lush paradoxical song from Willy's solo record Where Angels Fear To Tread that finds the right words to describe the feeling of not having the right words to say

Listen To “Venus Of Avenue D”:


Listen To “Every Word Is A Beat Of My Heart”:

Ace Frehley was a better lead guitarist drunk than most players are straight and his solo albums are clean urine samples compared to the tainted piss the other member of Kiss have put out. Starting with the Ace Frehley solo album and into the Frehley's Comet days, Ace has put out a string of records that may not walk a straight line, but always have a few choice tracks. "Rip It Out", "New York Groove", "Into The Night" and "Insane" are all solid singles that were either created or arranged by Ace (Russ Ballard was responsible for writing "New York Groove" and "Into the Night") and that stand on their own without needing lunch boxes or make up to command your attention.

On September 15th Ace Frehley's new solo album Anomaly hits the street with Anton Fig (from the Letterman show) on the drums backing some very strong guitar based songs. Check the new song "Outer Space" out and see for yourself. The truth is, Ace was the only guy in Kiss that really needed to wear the makeup, yet he has been the most successful member of the band without it.

Listen To “Outer Space” From The New Anomaly Album:

Check Out The New Commercial For Anomaly.

Hang Tight For More Posts Coming Soon And The Debut Of The 4 Minutes Of Fame PODCAST!

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Thanks Daddy-O.

I phoned my parents recently. I was hoping to get their voice mail, but my father tricked me by answering...  Not that I do not want to talk to my dad, we just travel dissimilar mental roads, so our conversations resemble 2 people that speak different languages that have run out of the few words that they know of the others tongue; saying "OK" over and over while nodding. The discussion my dad and I had on the phone is a microcosm of our divergent modes of operation. My father has a keen ability to draw you into something you are unprepared for and on this day it was a sermon on anti-diarrhea medication. He was recommending a particular brand when I asked him how he came to this ultimate decision. When he told me that my uncle had turned him on to this, a chill ran through me, for that meant that I was not the first person that he was having this uncomfortable conversation with. The blame for it continuing is mine, because I could not let it go and prodded him with more questions. "What does this man know about these products that the rest of us as citizens do not?" My father replied that my uncle did not have an anus. I was stunned yet thirsty for more, so I asked him to explain. I was informed that my uncle had has his anus surgically removed. My follow up was calm and sarcastic. "Did he get it done for cosmetic reasons?" There was a long silence broken by my dad's voice. "Let me get your mother on the phone."

Fathers and sons are different by design. The advantages going to the son for they are able to somewhat look into the future by analyzing their dads, think to them themselves "FUCK! That's not to happen to me..." then choose a proper course of action. I am actually named after my father, ironic for that might have been the only thing that I followed him into. Had my dad been a musician, things would have been different. My dad is actually a good guy, but Billy Gibbons, he is not. Those of you not fortunate enough to have rock star dads should be advised that being a legacy in the music business opens doors locked to everyone whose parents haven't mastered post-concert bathroom stall sex. Once through the door, the difference between being a second generation musician who gets signed to a record label and the first born taking over at the family bakery is having your own voice and style that distinguishes you from the music your father made. 

CHRIS MANCINI

Chris Mancini never really had a choice. When your father is Henry Mancini, the most well known and accomplished composers of the 20th century, you are going to pick up some ability simply by having your clothes mix with his in the laundry. Not performing initially, Chris focused on the business side of the music industry in publishing and producing TV's "The Midnight Special." When he eventually recorded an album, the goal was to take what he learned from his father but have his own footprint. How?  First, the album title "No Strings" was a coy reference to his genealogy yet how he intended to be his own man by not featuring the orchestra as his father did. This is rock music and you only use an orchestra when you run out of ideas...Secondly, using a page from his father's playbook, Chris enlisted a studio full of crack musicians like Waddy Watchel, Carmine Appice and Rick Derringer to create a slick and polished record that positioned itself to be one of those "out-of-left-field" songs that were embraced by both rock radio and FM top 40. 1983, however, was a tricky time to put music out. New Wave, Rap, and about 12 other styles were emerging, making it easy for a straight-ahead rock album to get lost quickly. Plus with music videos on every channel by this time, radio was no help as stations scrambled to keep pace with MTV and it's clones. Playing in a 6 shoe deck did not stop Mancini from delivering a glossy number ready to be pumped out of an open window with "Gonna Find Me A Girl Tonight." Crisp and layered with the scanning eye and confidence of a shoplifter; knowing once he clears the door and hits the street, the game is his. All this was not enough to get Mancini any airplay, and chances are the first time you heard this on the radio was also the last.

 

Listen To "Gonna Find Me A Girl Tonight"      

BILLY BURNETTE

The story goes the term "Rockabilly" came about when brothers Johnny and Dorsey Burnett of the Rock and Roll Trio, recorded a song about their sons (Johnny is one hit wonder Rocky Burnette's dad and Dorsey is Billy's father) called "Rockabilly Boogie." That is a lot of pressure on a kid who at the time was still working with safety scissors. When you have shoes that big to fill, you had better start early. Billy Burnette recorded his first single at age 7 and by the time he was out of high school he had a full album on the streets. By the time the third self titled Billy Burnette record came out (following the lead of Peter Gabriel's run of self titled albums), Rockabilly music had re-emerged with a tougher punk style that contradicted Burnette's Country influenced crooner melodies. The separation was a benefit that kept him from being lumped in with every rockabilly band that found a way to put "Cat" in their name. Burnette's grasp of Rockabilly style was genuine and traditional enough to be the guy that snuck off with your girl while you were at the rumble. "Don't Say No" has the magic of sounding like it is being sung to you from the street 2 stories down through an open window. The innocence of the vocals and rambling rhythm charm you as if it were your pants Burnette was trying to get in. This slick sales pitch for sex made it up to # 68 on the Billboard charts and rambled in to medium rotation on MTV.

Listen To "Don't Say No"      

"Watch The Video For "Don't Say No"

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At The Helm

Deciding The Direction Of A Band Is Much Easier When It Is Your Band

School as a youth is designed to prepare you for adult life and how it truly does so is not always initially apparent. There are covert lessons, broadcast on a hidden frequency, that don't become clear until logic steps in later in life. School time spent learning about democracy is perhaps the pupil's greatest delayed eye opener. Teachers speak with great pride about how we live in a nation that gives a voice and vote to everyone and exercising this gift is important and imperative. This immediately seems odd to me since I was not given a choice to what we would be discussing in class and when it was discussed. If we truly lived in a democracy, my vote would have been for a forum on underage drinking, and how to increase it. I am confident that I would be able to lobby enough votes to ratify...

It is not until later in life we realize the problem with a democracy and giving everyone a voice is that no one ever shuts up. High school, national government or anywhere else in life, if you open up the floor, some axewound is going to fuck it up by wasting everyone's time about dog sweaters. Since it is illegal to stab people like this in the throat (so in addition to watching them die, you don't have to listen to them anymore), you eliminate shit like this by having one person in charge. What you are truly voting for, is not for what you believe should be policy, it is to appoint a person that will have the power to tell someone to cram it, and where the crammed item should go. Nowhere is this more necessary than in rock music. Bands need leaders to focus on the business of being a band and to avoid conversations about what colors smell like. Most successful bands have the one person who refused to listen the nonsense about finishing school, instead just tuning into the noise they heard inside their head. The noise became vision, the vision became something called "my band", and "my band" became a carnival ride that went through musicians like disposable lighters. In order to successfully navigate this road, your bandleader needs to have direction, and this direction often starts with the instrument the band catalyst plays. You should quickly realize that Ted Nugent's band would sound different than Scott Weiland's because Nugent plays guitar and Weiland shoots heroin.

ICEHOUSE

Iva Davies is not just the leader and catalyst for the band Icehouse, he also may be the most successful oboe player on the planet. By Davies starting his musical education by learning the oboe in his youth, then parlaying this into a viable rock band, he became the dream example of every middle school music teacher. In hopes of getting people excited about woodwind instruments, a teacher might use this example to inspire; much in the same way singing waiters are reminded the Tony Curtis started his career in that shit job. The truth is that the quota for these rags-to-riches senerios is one and it has been filled-so press on with a different dream. The best an oboe player or singing waiter can hope for is to not get beat up every day on the way home.

The oboe did serve as part of the sonic template for Icehouse, a band with Davies as the centerpiece and only constant member. He used the atmospheric elements of the woodwind section to build layers and texture in his music. The band lived in the aural world between upbeat and melancholy, creating songs that mirrored both the open country and vibrant cities of Davies native Australia. Icehouse's 1983 EP "Fresco" was a 5 song display that attempted to raise the level of exposure in the U.S. "Street Cafe" was a spacious affair that paradoxically attempted to seek a personal connection. The song is a musical document of those ethereal moments, stamped in our minds, that took place somewhere real and tangible enough to cause us to return to the location time and again in order to relive and re-encounter what occurred. Fittingly, Street cafe appeared not only on "Fresco", but

The full album "Primitive Man" as well.

Listen to "Street Cafe"

The Golden Palominos

If you ever wondered why the drum machine never fully replaced the human drummer, you just need to remember that the drummer has weapons. Stationed behind the drum kit you will find a quiver of drumsticks, an arms length away to fire at anyone who dares to disagree. All it takes is 3 or 4 "OUCH! FUCK!" reactions before the drum machine vote get shelved. It also makes sense that a drummer led band would resist an electronic delivery in favor of a more traditional direction. Drummer Anton Fier formed his Golden Palominos to avoid the enchantment with technology, instead focusing on an intertwined emotional premise for each album that featured a rotating set of unique musical members. 1986's "Blast Of Silence" sauntered away from the stadium rock, new wave and hair metal records of the time that seemed to come with their own hair dryer, creating it own space, which eventually became alt-country and Americana music. The Peter Holsapple penned tune "Diamond" emerged as an anti-single drenched in back forty glamour featuring the painfully lush vocals of Syd Straw. "Diamond" moves along sadly, but briskly, carried by a simple depth brought about by a talented group (including T-Bone Burnett and Matthew Sweet) of players. The result is a timeless piece of haunting beauty and synergy.

Listen to "Diamond"

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Age Of Enlightenment.

Old Wise Men Say Youth Is Overrated.

Having the minimum drinking age at 21 is the single most counter-productive thing we do as a society. Teens and pre-teens are inundated with positive messages about the magic of alcohol, and from the moment they figure out the anti-drinking messages they get at school are bullshit, kids from all over the globe want to ride that whiskey pony. So what happens? They sneak, plan and wait for the epiphanic moment that they can crunk it up without the P.T.A. or mall security interfering. After waiting 7,8 or 9 years behind the velvet rope, the last guests at the party want to show they belong by chugging hooch at the rate that would make Andy Dick cry. By the time our young lions hit 25, they have left a trail of professional wreckage it would take a GPS to get out of.

This is easily repaired by allowing children of all ages to drink alcoholic bev

erages. A reckless drunk at 25 is in danger of losing jobs, friends, cars and some hard earned cash. A 14 year old rummy is really only in danger of repeating the 9th grade-giving them the physical superiority that you need for credibility and leadership. A 6-year-old lush? That's just flat out cute. Age will give you wisdom only if you are allowed the experience of fucking up the program. This is very true in the world of modern music, yet the paradox lies in the fact that contemporary music places a high premium on the youth of the performer. How do we expect an artist to sing about the virtues of love and politics without being old enough to have paid for an abortion?

SAMMY HAGAR

Sammy Hagar kept his age a secret better than a Cuban baseball

player. Hagar hit the national scene as the lead singer of Montrose at 26, went solo at 29 and by the time he became the front man for Van Halen he was almost 40. Hagar used his time in the trenches to solidify himself as a "man of the people", adeptly writing and performing songs about rocking hard and reckless driving that lead to vigorous fist pumping during his live shows. "The Red Rocker" (as he billed himself) succeeds in this niche using his vibrant charisma paralleled with guitar and voice packed with power. Although his solo work was accepted by FM rock radio, Hagar did not achieve mainstream success until 1981's "Standing Hampton." Sammy Hagar became a star rocker and tequila bottler by not only grinding it out over time, but by also paying attention to what was happening around him musically. His songwriting ability not only assisted his being asked to be in Van Halen, he also was covered by the eerie combination of Rick Springfield and Bette Midler. Midler dipped into Sammy twice for songs, first on "The Rose" soundtrack and next for a cover of his song "Red." As an effort to brand himself, Hagar recorded "Red," a rolling rocker with a live feel, yet full of the warm tones favored by FM radio (in order to distance the medium from AM). Considered to be Sammy Hagar's first anthem, it never was officially released as a single, however, it remains a staple of his live show to this day.

Listen To "Red"

Buy Sammy Hagar Music

THE MONKS

I can't think of anything more tiring than listening to "Prog Rock." 13 minute songs about things that black light posters are made into make me want to ask if there is a gas station between here and the end of this song. The Strawbs, whose beginnings were in the mid '60's, were a prominent band within the Prog Rock movement throughout the 1970's until Richard Hudson and John Ford grew tired of renaissance fair groupies and bolted the band for something less tedious. After some sorting out, Hudson and Ford established The Monks, a group that attempted to humorously mimic Punk Rock. These guys were much older and experienced than the bands they attempted to parody, so musicianship ironically concealed the comedy and the single "Nice Legs Shame About Her Face" hit the top 20 in the UK. With not everyone in on the joke, the veteran Monks were believed to be an actual Punk Rock outfit. "Drugs In My Pocket" borrowed from the Reggae influence of Punk, highlighting the libertine time after scoring, but before ingesting controlled substances. Swift, free and upbeat as that glorious moment, the song utilizes sound effects at both ends of the tune that assist in presenting effective audio theatre. The key to this song is the combination of the smooth rhythm section, angular guitar and a hard cockney accent of the narrator to create a story where the right person is holding the incorrect item on the wrong side of town.

Listen To "Drugs In My Pocket"

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Leap Of Faith

Sometimes, To Find Religion, You Need To Get Lost.

DEZ DICKERSON

What amazes me about religion is that it retains its world wide popularity without the embracement of technology. It seems that the various heads of the different religions have figured out that scientific, communication and design advancements would inevitably dwindle the number of the faithful. Some funding along with some creative thinking could bring faith into the 21st century. Using the same principles behind developing paranormal detection instruments, we couldn't be too far away from the introduction of a "Pious Meter" that would be used to ascertain the actual level of one's spirituality. A very handy item for the workplace to be used on employees asking for time off for religious commitments. With one pass of the "ipious"(The truth shall set you free) or "Pious Pole" (Tell the truth or you don't have a prayer) your boss could tell the difference between the person of true faith and the chooch who wants the day off to wave a John 3:16 banner at the roller derby playoff.

Time off from work for spiritual reasons is accepted universally as the payment for rolling into your house of worship on a semi-weekly basis. Leaving your job all together over religion frightens people because it makes them wonder what kind of heavy shit you are really into. When Dez Dickerson stepped down as Prince's lead guitarist for The Revolution after the "1999" tour, he said it was for religious reasons, but you have to wonder if he left for the church or because Prince thought he was god. Dickerson actually became a born again christian a few years before and the songs often charged with ferocious sexual themes began to trouble him as well as speculated non-credit for the writing, or partial writing of songs (Dez was rumored to be involved with the writing of "When You Were Mine" from 1980's "Dirty Mind" and covered the song after he left the Prince camp). Dickerson channeled this internal paradox through his guitar and emitted a very deft and precise soulfulness that was able find credibility with both funk and rock audiences. Dickerson left Prince's band but stayed within his sphere of influence which provided Dickerson and his new unsigned band "The Modernaires" an appearance in the movie "Purple Rain".  The song "Moderaire" carried the bouncy march embodied by all of the songs from the movie, however, live footage of the band was limited to under 30 seconds in the film and the song was a last minute deletion from the soundtrack in favor of Prince's 11th hour compositions (It was his movie after all). "Modernaire'" is a nimble intertwining of sytnh and guitar as the beat moves you across the room with your shoulder blades and footsteps in syncopation until you realize its charm is also its curse-it sounds too much like the rest of the songs on "Purple Rain" to honestly allow Dickerson to escape from Prince's shadow. For years the only way to find this song was to count off 17 paces from the big rock with an eyepatch and dig, but that curse is in this case its charm... not having it crammed down our throats allow you to appreciate the song for what it is: a cool lost track that has finally been released from a ground breaking soundtrack.

Listen To "Modernaire"


Buy Dez Dickerson's "Modernaire"

RIOT

The band Riot had looked like they put the right pieces together when they released "Fire Down Under" in 1981. After some changes from the original lineup and a solid showing as an effective touring undercard for several platinum selling hard rock acts they were receiving solid rock radio airplay and broke into the Billboard top 100 albums. On the verge of wider success the band had a divine "interruption" when vocalist Guy Speranza opted to leave Riot due to his religious convictions clashing with his duties as singer in a metal band. Upon his departure Guy settled in Florida to work as an exterminator, leaving me to ask what religion does not allow the debauchery filled nights in a band yet allows the daily killing required in the pest control field? 

Riot's songs were regulated to the PM portions of the FM radio programming schedule providing the sound that fueled the citizens of the American night whose perception ability rose as the sun set. Even though Riot was based in NYC, they received some juice when they were grouped in with The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, scoring enough advance money to promote themselves to the point that their label picked them back up after dropping the band.  "Swords and Tequila" was the first single and led the album off with a guitar riff that hacked at you with a seemingly drunken fury that intensified with Speranza's smokey and powerful singing. The litmus test for a badass rock song to me, is changing the title of the song during the chorus to any other words with the same amount of syllables and see if it is still effective (as of this writing "Stab Whoopi Goldberg" is my favorite). The truth is, I don't care what he is singing, for when the song reaches the guitar break, I am charged up enough to take to the street and cold cock the ice cream man. The violent theme of the song is a happy accident, for rock music, at its finest is like a street fight: It starts in a flash, its over in a few short minutes and when all is finished everyone is looking around to figure out what happened.

Listen To "Swords and Tequila"


Purchase Riot Music

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Got You Covered

Prepare To Meet Your Re-Makers

The Inmates

When you do a cover version of someone else's song you have to treat it like you are sleeping with someone else's wife. You don't want to be too obvious, you don't want to get involved with something old and tired that has a lot of baggage and do it so well that just once isn't enough. What happens most of the time in this situation is that it ends up being forgotten about because the parties involved are too embarrassed that it ever occurred. Covering a classic song? That takes balls, so in order to pull that off without getting pistol whipped in a rage of cathartic jealously by the guy whose life you ruined with this shit, you have to go into this with the expectation that you are going to own it when you are done with it by doing something unique. The Inmates weren't home wreckers, they were more like your mom's new boyfriend-they did the same stuff your dad did but much cooler because he actually wants you to like him.

The Inmates were lumped in with Punk and New Wave like everything else from 1979 that didn't have a 6 minute guitar solo and an album sleeve inspired by a gram of psilocybin laced mushrooms. What they really were was a bad-ass bar band who were not looking to make something new, but to dress up mid '60s rock with leather and a bottle of mid shelf bourbon creating a sound that reached out from your speakers and grabbed you by the throat long enough to shake the wuss out of anyone within earshot. "Dirty Water" was a severe and unapologetic overhaul of a dated top 20 hit, and they nailed it. The difference in the sound between The Standells original recording of "Dirty Water" and The Inmates remake of the song was the quality of the water they were singing about. The initial entry from 1966 was menacing by glorifying the polluted riverbanks of Boston's Charles River and hiding references to The Boston Strangler in it's murky reverb. By the time 1979 rolled around, the rivers of the world's large industrial cities were toxic fire spawning death flows, so any redoing of this song needed to reflect the current state of affairs by being as hard as the edge of a busted beer mug and having a badge of honor quality, therefore, avoiding sounding like you are the opening band at a No Nukes concert held in the parking lot of a stereo store. The band stamped these badges, town by town, making city specific versions (re-recording an entire stanza-not just dropping the location in an empty space in the song) with the name of the local river pressed on promotional 12" vinyl for local radio play. So, not only did Baltimore, Houston, Cleveland and the rest of industrial America get an "oh wow!" version of the song, they were guaranteed a shout along showstopper when the band played a local venue.

Listen to "Dirty Water"

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David Lindley and El-Rayo X

The dream date with David Lindley begins and ends much differently than the bar crawl we just had with The Inmates. Lindley arrives promptly in a second hand pickup with flowers picked minutes ago from your neighbor's garden. Dressed in eclectic thrift shop gear, he whisks you away for an ironically original evening of leftovers and reruns. This is the genius of David Lindley and El-Rayo X, crafting magic out of previously recorded material, chosen with deft to suit his voice, style and playing ability.

Lindley is a crack musician and a master of every single string instrument, however he and his band refuse to be caught in the trappings of virtuoso pretension, instead focusing on creating an entertaining aural ruckus, peppered with layers of different instruments. Every album the band released beginning in the early 1980's (After Lindey left Jackson Browne's band) was a new batch of hairy buffalo effortlessly fusing unrelated genres of music. By the time the band released it's final record "Very Greasy" the block party had moved to the Caribbean.

Leading off side 2 is an adventurous strike at Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London" which in theory has all the appeal of passing a kidney stone. The ability to pull off something of this magnitude owes it's success to the listener not knowing what they are listening to until the operation is in overdrive, like being kidnapped by drunken strippers. The song holds you at boobpoint, racing, swaying and strangely hypnotized by David Lindley speaking, not singing, the lyrics that Zevon wrote and free forming a few of his own. It is the music and the band, however, that keep this from becoming a farce by balancing adept horns and a brilliant slide guitar break that ends as abruptly as 3 dollar lap dance.

Listen to "Werewolves Of London"

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Committed

If you Asked These Two Musicians If They Were Crazy... They Might Say Yes

Alice Cooper

It's getting so hard to see a doctor nowadays that people are soliciting examinations for all of their ailments from people on the street. Either they want to be calmed and reassured death is not minutes away or doctor visits are eating into their lottery money. Normal citizens will ask me to view discolorations of the skin or some knot or bump and actually want my opinion of what it might be. My answer, always the same, "That's cancer," seems to alarm them. "Oh my god! Why would you say such a thing?" I tell them this because I am not a doctor and I want them to go away. This will work most of the time...

Our obsession with diagnosing others as "crazy" has reached such expert proportions that the word is meaningless in modern society. To label someone crazy does not have anything to do with their mental state any longer, it just means they have outlived their usefulness. Someone exceeding the speed limit behind the wheel of a car you're in is making good time, until they get a ticket, then they were driving like a maniac. Girlfriends aren't crazy - EX girlfriends are. Back in the 20th century if you were "crazy," you got thrown in the hole, not released back into the wild to drunk dial you at 4:15 am claiming you ruined their life by not doing the dishes. Being crazy meant something and branded you with a badge of honor that scared the fuck out of voters and landowners. Alice Cooper scared people and got put away, but is by no means crazy.

Alice Cooper is the Hugh Hefner of rock, meaning his name is the brand and everyone wants to hang out with him. When asked about not being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame he said it would be cooler to "get kicked out" of it, displaying the aura that made everyone stop asking what his real name (Vincent Furiner) is. Also making up that aura was Alice's late 1970's daily consumption of booze that would euthanize the average bar patron. This drunken layer not only affected the Cooper stage show but his judgment enough to write a loose concept album around a fictional private detective named "Maurice Escargot." The record, "Lace And Whiskey" tried to succeed by harnessing the singer's newly found star power (Cooper appeared on the Muppets, Hollywood Squares, Dinah Shore's talk show and funded the renovation of the famous "Hollywood" sign.) and a ballad ("You And Me" which went to #9 on Billboard.) helped the album sell, but no one was really buying that this baby killer was in the rat pack. During the support tour for the album, Cooper checked himself into a sanitarium in order to treat his sadistic alcohol habit. Before he cleaned himself up, he recorded "It's Hot Tonight", a bad ass rocker enough out of place with the rest of the album that metaphorically has a drunken Cooper picking up the best looking girl in the bar. The opening riff is as heavy as a humid summer night without air conditioning, giving way to twin guitar ruckus mimicking all the noise from the street cascading through your open window. The song might have been taken more seriously if it was not for Cooper's need for fame knocking down his credibility with the rock crowd and the stage performance of the song featuring the singer in full P.I. getup being chased by chickens with automatic weapons.

Listen to "It's Hot Tonight"

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Frank Marino

Frank Marino took a lot of acid, so much of it the experiences couldn't be called "trips" they were full blown relocations. As a result of these daily interactions with LSD, he had to be placed in an institution while still in his teens. Instead of concentrating on eating solid food again while under psychiatric care, Marino instead focused on playing guitar religiously throughout the day forging his renowned speed, power and technical skill that drew comparisons to the greatest guitar players dead or alive, and a drive and passion not normally associated with someone that probably used the word "groovy" more than once. After being released from the hospital (or maybe being asked to leave on account of the noise being too much for the inhabitants of the ward) Marino embarked on his journey into rock music with a slightly clearer sense of direction.

After pounding out a number of albums with his band "Mahogany Rush", Frank ventured on his own trying to expand on his Canadian homeland fan base by breaking through in the US. Marino's second solo effort "Juggernaut" succeeds in capturing the American audience by showcasing the guitar player's adept ability to bounce between different styles, both old and new. The new was the initial single from the album "Strange Dreams", and its addition of a synthesizer, which meshes very well as it interacts amongst the heaviness of the story generated in the deepest sleep. This new dimension works because Marino himself, and not some new wave poseur, mans the controls of the synth line so it acts almost as another guitar track, complementing the sound of the song enough to make you want to reach for the corner of your eye in order to remove the deposit that built up overnight. The song's ability to get attention without overpowering you had no similar brethren on the album, dooming any change of a successful follow-up single.

Listen to "Strange Dreams"

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Bail! Bail! Rock And Roll!

Checking Out The Last Records Of 2 Bands That Checked Out.

Artful Dodger

The marathon. A race in tribute to a guy that ran 26+ miles then dropped dead. Why would you sign up for this? I would drop out right after the 1st wheelchair contestant passed me by or when they told me what that liquid you drink during the race actually is. Life is a enough of a marathon on its own. Anyone that tells you life is short has cancer-because life is the LONGEST thing you will ever do. Brushing your teeth? I have heard you should brush them for 2 minutes. 2 MINUTES?! Do you really expect me to be away from my cell phone for that long? Don't dictate to me when I'm done. No matter if it's a marathon or I'm brushing my teeth, I am finished when I get bored or when I see some blood... All of us have that timer inside that tells us when it's time to go. The "time to go" timer for the band Artful Dodger, however, had a snooze alarm.

Artful Dodger was a national band that unfortunately only had a regional following. Pockets of fervor in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic were not enough to carry the band further than small clubs and sporadic radio airplay. After 3 albums on Columbia that did not sell (even though they contained perfect Power Pop masterpieces such as "Wayside" and Think Think"), the label told them to hit the bricks and they were left out on the street to fend for themselves, eventually signing with the obscure Ariola label, thus buying the band an extra 9 minutes of sleep. The biggest problem keeping the band from breaking through on a larger level is what they refer to in the film industry as their "high concept pitch" (meaning you can not describe the idea in one short sentence). So instead of attempting to describe Artful Dodger as "Yearning guitars and smokey yet powerful vocals about love lost or never had. A band with a smart pop sensibility with the edge of desperation that crystallizes the sound of your breaking heart though a Marshall amp.", the sell was "They sound like the Faces if Rod Stewart didn't want to be on the cover of People Magazine," and no one wanted to buy that album....

Small record deal or not, 1980's Rave On was a beautiful album showcasing all that made this band special to a select few. Clear and focused in the way you would be when you decide to swallow the whole bottle of pills, the band might have known this was the last mile and created this record as a headstone to 1970's Power Pop sound that they helped create. "A Girl (La La La)" was the rock radio single that might have been too vulnerable to be a hit, although the sing-along outro on the song showed that they still wanted to give it a try. Artful Dodger came to an end in 1982 when Billy Paliselli, the band's lead singer, appropriately broke some hearts when he resigned.

Listen to "A Girl (La La La)

Let's Active 

It seemed everyone knew about Let's Active yet no one owned any of their records. The band's highest charting album went to #111 and they had only one single that charted, and that was #17 on the Modern Rock Tracks, a chart compiled from stations that at the time had slightly more listeners and slightly less signal strength than Ecuadorian CB Radio. Those that tuned in were in for a treat. Band founder/leader and producer, Mitch Easter, coaxed lush but angular sounds out terrestrial equipment creating a manifest for the moody jangle rock of the mid 1980's. There were several lineups (that somehow included Easter's girlfriend or wife...) from '81 to '88 ,with the only constant being Easter and his alchemic production ability. Late in the decade, Easter surveyed the scene, and felt he was older than everyone else that was in a band. Getting that rush of blood to the head similar to when you realize you are most senior person at the neighborhood Arby's, Easter more or less dissolved the band that had been named after a bad English to Japanese translation of "Let's Get Physical."

Our last glimpse of Let's Active is a maturation from the quirkiness and sparseness of their initial album, through the texture and layers of the middle releases, to the stadium ready powerful alternative rock that was 7 years too early to the party. In an attempt to bring some mainstream success, an outside producer was used on "Every Dog Has It's Day" instead of Easter, however, these are his songs, his style and his voice-a slight southern drawl trying to reach for the note above the cookie jar. The title track was the song that eventually climbed the Modern Rock Chart mentioned earlier. Possibly the loudest Let's Active song, its charm rests in the spacing between the guitar notes. Perhaps realizing that it might take a minute to wrap your ahead around the fact that this is indeed Let's Active, the band gives you a second to catch up before blasting away again. 

Listen to "Every Dog Has It's Day"


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