Wicked Vicars

Remember the Coop

2012-02-09T12:16:00.000+01:00

They've just released some mini LP CD editions of Alice Cooper's 70s back catalogue in Japan. They've also been digitally rejiggered (something that has been long overdue for these albums) and the ones I have sound great. But the reason I'm posting about them is that I've never seen CD reissues with such incredible attention to detail as these.

The picture above is the package for the School's Out album. Everything is there, from the folding out desk sleeve, to the tracklisting insert and even (and they're gilding the lily here) a set of mini nonwoven panties to mimic the notorious ones they used on the original vinyl one.

The Muscle of Love one is even more impressive. The cardboard sleeve is an uncanny replica of the one used for the vinyl album, and the inner sleeves are all present and accounted for. Note as well, how they have the correct versions of the Warner Label on the respective CDs. These guys haven't missed a trick.

Of course this just reminds you how much thought and expense went into the packaging on those albums when they first came out. Whether it was 1972 calenders, desks, billion dollar notes or LP sleeves as lunatic asylums, these records have some of the more memorable packaging of the time, and let's be honest, they probably contributed significantly to the band's success. Which in some ways is a shame because those albums didn't really need that much help. The four records that the band made with Bob Ezrin (Love it to Death, Killer, School's Out and Billion Dollar Babies) are all strong albums, especially the last one, which is stuffed to the gills with hits. Though to be fair, others, such as the patchy Muscle of Love needed all the help they could get.

If you know the albums, you'll know that - the odd bit of overproduction aside - they've aged pretty well. Killer in particular sounds as fresh as paint. In fact, it's a bit puzzling why the band isn't regarded more highly: they were undoubtedly influential - the group photo on the cover of the School's Out single (below) was the template for just about every band that hung out on Sunset Strip during the 80s. Come to think of it, maybe that's the problem.

Widow's Weed

2012-01-31T11:06:00.000+01:00

I've long believed that there aren't many types of music that can't be improved by the addition of a Black Sabbath riff somewhere. A strategically-placed gonzoid riff is like Tabasco sauce or balsamic vinegar - it can transform the driest bowl of chips or the dullest plate of greens into a satisfying meal.

Which brings me to Folk Rock. Now, I should like Folk Rock, after all, Highway 61 Revisited and John Wesley Harding are two of my favourite albums. However, I find that most of what goes under the banner of Folk Rock these days is heavy on the Folk and light on the Rock; all those plaintive acoustic numbers strummed by scruffy young mean with beards don't do much for me. That sort of thing would be much improved by some Sabbath riffs.

I think Espers get this. The track below is from their second album, Espers II, which I've been playing a lot recently (the fact that they called their second album Espers II already endears me to them: not enough of that these days if you ask me). The album is Folk Rock that's not scared of electric guitars, and this particular track even has some Sabbath riffs to add an extra air of menace. I think it's great. They're on eMusic, if you're a subscriber; if not the album was going cheap on Amazon last I looked, and while you're there you could even pick up their third album, called - you've got it - Espers III. How can you not like this band?

Recordshopper

2011-12-19T03:08:00.000+01:00

The first single I bought was Beat the Clock by Sparks, which I bought from my local Woolies in 1979 or so. I still like Sparks and I like to think that having this as my first single indicates what great musical taste I had as a 10 year old. Actually, the reality is the charts in those years were so strong that you could have sent a chimpanzee into Woolies with a quid and a sign saying "I want a random Top 20 single", and the chances are he would have come out with something pretty decent. Unless he spotted the Pick n Mix counter first, I suppose.

For the next 8 years or so before I went off to college my record buying was mostly done in my local town's music shop (and it was a music shop, not a record shop; there was as much space given over to acoustic guitars, recorders and accordions as there was to Iron Maiden albums). There was nothing cool about the place, it was a family-owned shop that had a couple of racks for records, one of which had Scottish music albums (I hesitate to use the word "folk" here: mostly they were awful records with middle-aged blokes on the cover wearing chunky sweaters and kilts with titles like My Heart is in the Highlands), while the other was for rock and pop. The fact that it has such limited space meant that you soon ended up ordering most of your records, and my friends and I became well-acquainted with the shop's copy of the Music Master catalogue as we ordered such obscure recordings such as Meddle, Houses of the Holy and Master of Reality (before CDs came along back catalogue records seemed to be doomed to obscurity, especially the older ones. You would never see a copy of, say, Pet Sounds or John Wesley Harding in a record shop).

So, happy recollections of more innocent times? No, not really. Most of the time, the ordered records arrived within a week or two, but delays were common, especially if you weren't ordering from the majors. My copy of Black Sabbath's Sabotage, on the cheaper-than-chips NEMS label took seven months to arrive. Seven months! Plus, not everything was available and you would often arrive at the shop hoping to pick up your record only to hear the dread word "deleted".

I now realise that I was buying my records back then in essentially the same way as I buy the majority of my music these days - by mail order. The exception being that I was using the Music Master as opposed to Amazon (and if I could have accessed Amazon on my ZX Spectrum 48K, I would have).

I don't think the music shop is there anymore, not many of them are, having been bit torrented and amazoned to that great high street in the sky. And to be honest, I don't really mourn them. I thought I did, but the process of writing this post has made me realise that, if I'm really honest, I don't. Now on the other hand, I think second hand record shops should be goverment-subsidised, as they are effectively museums of popular culture where you can buy the exhibits. But that's a different post.

Anyway, as it's that time of the year, it's time to wish you all a good Christmas and post a picture of the record below, which may have been the first 12" single that I ever bought (I told you that my 10 year old self had good taste).

The Crystallised Banana Show

2011-12-05T05:24:00.001+01:00

I suppose I should have enjoyed the Anvil film a lot more than I did. After all, heavy metal documentaries are usually catnip to me, even though they tend to cover the same ground (Birmingham ...blah blah .... heavy industry ... blah blah ...Born to be Wild ... blah blah) and have the same old talking heads with the leaky memories. I'll sit and watch them all night. So why didn't I like the Anvil film?

Well first of all, the film suffers from that common ailment that we can call "Swollen Opinions". Now I remember Anvil back in the 80s, when they were seen as a silly bunch of chancers from Canada who would pose for photos with a vibrator (or as Kerrang! put it: "erm, a crystallised banana"). However, according to the film, they were one of the time's most influential bands who somehow unjustly missed out on stardom. So we saw an old copy of Kerrang with them on the cover, even though back then Kerrang would put pretty much anybody on the cover, such as Aldo Nova, Baron Rojo and Budgie. We had Malcolm Dome go on about how "heavy" they were, and we got endorsements from folk like Lemmy, Scott Ian, Lars Ulrich and Slash. In fact we got to hear more people talking about their music than the music itself, and when you heard the music you realised why.

However, the other reason I didn't warm to the film may just be a consequence of me getting older. The "plot" of the documentary involves Lips raising 13,000 pounds from his sister to finance recording professionally their new album (their 13th) which they then hawk (unsuccessfully) around major record labels. We're meant to see this as showing that they have a Never Say Die spirit and are fully dedicated to living the Rock & Roll Dream. But I just saw it as desperation, a last Hail Mary from a bunch of 50-something musicians in denial who can't accept that their time has past. The younger me would probably have admired that dedication. The older me felt sorry for the sister.

Edit: I've realised that my friend Bright Ambassador also wrote a (much better) post about the film, and moreover, unlike me, wrote about the damn thing when it came out. You can read it here.

Labels

2011-08-15T16:36:00.000+02:00

I was reading this post about an artist who does paintings of 7" singles in their paper sleeves. He doesn't do picture sleeves, just the old-fashioned paper sleeves with a cut-out where you can see the record label. It got me thinking about the artwork on record labels. Sometimes the label design was a form of guarantee - the Atco Stax and RAK labels gave the potential purchaser an idea of what type of music was contained inside. And some record labels just become associated with a particular artist - I can't see the red Polydor label without hearing Noddy Holder going "Baby baby baaaaaaaaby!!!!"

So what were the record labels from the NWOBHM days that stick in the mind? Well, I'd put forward the following four for starters.

The Iron Maiden EMI Label

There is surely a case for saying that Iron Maiden may be the best-managed band around. What I find most impressive about their early EMI label was the fact that they did it at all. Such a vanity was rare in those days but surely someone on the management team twigged that if they did have their own label it would make people think they were a major band, even if at the time, they definitely weren't. Looks good too.

Bronze

I'm not sure what to make of Bronze as a label. On the one hand, it had Motorhead, Girlschool and Angel Witch on it, but on the other, I can't help thinking that all three of these bands (especially the last two) would have done a lot better if they were on a proper label with real marketing moolah. Still, it was a memorable label; just by looking at it you hear a gruff voice say "...just in case".

Neat Records

We can't let the majors have all the fun. The thing about the Neat Records label is that you know what it looks like even if you don't actually own any records on it. I don't have any records on Neat, and even back in the day the only thing I had on Neat was an awful sampler cassette I ordered from Sounds, but I still know what the label looks like.

Horrible Clickety Clackety Moulded Plastic

Sadly, the golden years of Metal coincided with record labels realising that they could cut costs by doing away with paper labels and just stamping a design onto the plastic. I hated these cheap, thin, brittle buggers. And they scratched and scuffed much more easily than their counterparts with the paper labels. I still have my original copies of Since You Been Gone and All Night Long and they have so much surface noise they sound like they were pressed the same day as one of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five recordings. Still, there's no denying that a lot of great singles ended up being pressed like this, especially by members of the old guard like Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, Rush and Dio Sabbath, so they need to take their place at the table.

So, what have I missed? Should the horrible pink of Carrere's label be there? Or the rather fetching Jet Records label that the Girl and Randy Rhoads Ozzy singles came out on? I'm sure there's something that triggers some of your memories...

10 Random Thoughts on Lemmy: The Movie

2011-08-07T16:53:00.000+02:00

1. I'd like to have seen more of the Tiswas Years. There was a time when Motörhead had Top 10 singles and appeared on Saturday morning TV. I'm guessing that was the time when they attracted most of their long time fans. They haven't always been an underground band.
2. No Girlschool? Kim and Enid were thanked in the credits, but were nowhere to be seen in the film. If you can find space for Jarvis Cocker and Peter hook, then surely you can find space for Girlschool.
3. You need a record company with a marketing budget behind you. AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Motorhead all broke into the charts in 1980 - 82, but only the first two went on to a life of mansions and ivory back scratchers. If Motorhead had been on Atlantic or EMI in the early 80s rather than Bronze, their story may have been different.
4. Stacia really was something, eh? Now I know why my blogging friend Lost Jimmy is so keen to time travel back to 1973.
5. Dave Grohl's "Professional Fan" routine is starting to grate, and he's running the risk of turning into a Metal version of Bono.
6. You don't need to be a professional psychologist to be intrigued by his relationship with fruit machines. He even had one in the dressing room. Unfortunately the film tended to take the "Dude, it's frickin' Lemmy!" approach when discussing eccentricities.
7. Bomber has a great riff. I knew that already, and I'm guessing that you know that too, but go and stick it on just now. It really has a great riff.
8. The Musician's Hyperbole was well in evidence. Despite what Ozzy Osbourne said, Motörhead did not invent Heavy Metal. That was a band called Black Sabbath, Ozzy. You used to sing for them.
9. Watching him leave his flat to go on tour, I was thinking that Samsonite are missing a great sponsorship opportunity.
10. And where was Philthy Animal?

Armed & Ready: Killer

2011-06-12T18:10:00.000+02:00

Another band from the Armed & Ready section of Kerrang! Killer were from Wiltshire, which is made to sound like something from the TV series Children of the Stones in the article. Like a lot of the Armed & Ready bands, they had a healthy dose of ambition, proclaiming their music "unusually original", and even designing their own scaled dragon/cat hybrid logo, which they no doubt hoped would be gracing back patches and school jotters up and down the land.

Killer are based in Salisbury and have problems in persuading anyone 'of influence' to travel to the standing stones-strewn wilds of Wiltshire and witness their brand of murderous metal. This in spite of a five track demo tape which, the band claim, has attracted the interest of several record companies.
A cut-throat quintet, Killer have been together for a year and comprise alan Marsh (vocals), Andy boulton (guitar), Ray Disomore (guitar), andy Robbins (bass) and Steve Pierce (drums). Their emblem - a snarling, scaled dragon-cat hybrid, very Dennis Wheately - is a successful amalgam of weirdness, witchcraft and demonic design.
In the past two months, the group have begun to venture into the capital's venues and immoedestly proclaim that they regularly receive 'amazing responses' considering their unkown status. "We are now attracting audiences in excess of 250 every time we play at the Horseshoe in London's Tottenham Court Road," says Bassman Robbins proudly.
Musically, Killer play an 'unusually original' brand of HM 'combining hard-driving rhythms with closely-knit guitar and vocal harmonies'.

Source: Kerrang! No. 3, September 1981

Pan's People Dancing to "Jeepster"

2011-05-30T10:24:00.000+02:00

Flick Colby, member and choreographer of Pan's People died over the weekend. I'm too young to remember Pan's People on Top of the Pops; Legs & Co were the first dance act I remember, so what I've seen of them comes from YouTube or the odd TOTP2 show.

I wish I could remember them, because I think they were great. My favourite routine is the one above. It's bright, raunchy and a bit dumb, which, let's face it, is perfect for a T-Rex hit. The 70s are getting a bit of a bad press at the moment, we're being led to believe it was all strikes, spaghetti hoops, football hooligans and going cap in hand to the IMF. Me, I think it's a decade with a long reach.

I'll leave the last word to Clive James. The quote below is from his TV Review in the Observer on March 30th, 1980 (for context, he was criticizing dance troupes of the time like Hot Gossip, whom were appearing on the Kenny Everett show in stocking and suspenders).

There was never a sexier television dance group than Pan’s People at the height of their fame, and that was because they gave you what is known among traditional jazz-men as a flash. You can’t have a flash without a skirt.

He's right, you know. RIP, Flick.

The 1982 Air Guitar Championship

2011-05-22T20:04:00.000+02:00

Before Guitar Hero came along, people had to make do with air guitar, and I have to say that in my teenage years I was pretty damn good at it. My first axe would have been my elder brother's squash racket. Squash rackets make surprisingly good guitars; the neck is relatively long meaning you can do some serious fretwork, and it's especially good for doing that "drag the plectrum up the strings" routine, like the start of Stargazer. However, Squash rackets also have relatively small heads, so I soon graduated to the more widely used tennis racket. This would have been a cheap wooden racket from Woolworths (a.k.a. the "Winfield Stratocaster"), and it was on this that I perfected my technique. Note that when all this was happening, my ability on the actual guitar never really got past playing Smoke on the Water and Whole Lotta Rosie on one string.

Air guitar was once a serious business. In 1982 there was even the Ad Lib Air Guitar Contest, held at Camden Palace, with judges including Pete Townshend off of The Who, Andy Summers off of The Police, Rick Parfitt off of Status Quo and "Fast" Eddie Clarke. Fast Eddie had just left Motorhead and was presumably available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and these types of events. Come to think of it, he probably still is. Anyway, the winner was Jean-Francois Desbled who won, ironically if you ask me, an actual Vox guitar and amplifier. I hope they asked him to play it.

Armed & Ready: Exciter

2011-05-17T13:23:00.000+02:00

Apologies for not posting much recently. I thought I'd post some entries from the Armed & Ready section of the early days of Kerrang over the next few weeks. I love picking up an old music magazine and reading the Next Big Thing section. These days The Next Big Things tend to be a bunch of beardy folkies from Connecticut wearing washed-out T-Shirts and flares. That's all very well, but it's much more fun to go back to the days when the Next Big Things wore denim jackets, ill-fitting spandex and gave you an address at the bottom where you could buy their five track demo tape for £3 plus a SAE.

So let's start with Exciter, who were Dutch, and in some ways an early metal version of Hanson, featuring three brothers, of whom the youngest was a mere 14 years old. The author of the article, Geoff Barton, didn't seem that impressed: "untogether" and "a little shambolic" were usually code words for "worse musicians than Venom". Still, getting in Kerrang! at 14 was no mean feat, and it was a good name.

Stand by for Exciter! As the name implies, the band's 'greatest idols' were Judas Priest. A thoroughly normal obsession for any young group, you might think. But what isn't so normal about this lot is that (1) they're Dutch and (2) they contain a member who's a mere 14 years old!
Out of the four members, three are brothers: very much a family affair. Gert Admiraal plays bass and sings lead vocals. Walter Admiraal is the drummer and Marcel Admiraal is the aforementioned youngster on the lead axe. Odd man out is Marc Karsten, also a guitarist.
I'm lifting these facts from a letter sent to me by one Harry Dijkema, informing me of Exciter's existence. 'They play now a year together', reports Harry, 'and they have their own equipment and they change it in Marshall. three of the boys are working and from their money they buy good equipment.
'Gert' he continues, 'writes all the songs from the band and they are much influenced by the bands from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal like Raven, Saxon and Iron Maiden.'
Exciter's two-track demo tape is at the very least, uh, interesting. Although 'Meet You in Hell' and 'See the Diamond' sound untogether and a little shambolic they are, by the same token, extremely frantic and very, very heavy. It's as if the band have the ideas, but not as yet the technical abilities to make them work to their best advantage.
The Klaus Meine-style voice is something of a turn-off, but the smallest Admiraal (see him on the far right of the picture) more than makes up the inadequacies in the vocal department with his astonishing virtuoso guitar playing.
The boy is a star! And Angus Young had better watch out: if Marcel chose to, he could dress up as a satchel-carrying schoolboy onstage and do it legitimately!

Source: Kerrang! no. 3, September 1981.

Pioneers

2011-03-27T23:35:00.000+02:00

An old boss of mine had a line that he would use whenever someone was trying to sell him an idea on the basis that if we went down a particular direction, we would be "pioneers".
"I don't want to be a pioneer", he would reply, "I know what happened to the pioneers; the indians filled them with arrows."

The clip above is from a Black Sabbath concert in Paris in 1970, which has been knocking around on DVD for a while now. When I first saw this concert, what struck me was the audience. You get a good look at them at the start of this clip, as the cameraman helpfully pans across the cinema in which the show takes place. It's not a heavy metal audience. Instead, it's a bunch of French hipsters, who look a lot like the 1968 students from Bertolucci's The Dreamers. You can imagine that they had turned up to see what this new English rock band sounded like; the one that the music press was saying were even louder than the Yardbirds. Louder than the Yardbirds! Ce n'est pas possible! They probably showed Zabriske Point afterwards.

But of course it's not a heavy metal audience. There were no heavy metal audiences before Black Sabbath. No denim jackets with back patches. No studded wristbands. No air guitars. None of the above. Sabbath must have spent the first 5 or so years of their existence playing the likes of N.I.B. and Black Sabbath in front of crowds of bemused hip young things wondering what the devil was going on. That couldn't have been as easy as it sounds. They must have taken a lot of arrows.

Fly, on your way, like an Eagle

2011-03-09T12:40:00.001+01:00

You may have already seen this doing the rounds of the internet but I'm sure you won't mind seeing it again. Three thoughts struck me while watching it:

First, Flight of Icarus is a damn good pop song. That's right: pop song. It rattles along impressively and the chorus is full of hooks. The ABBA lads wouldn't have kicked it out of bed, that's what I'm saying.

Secondly, it's refreshing to see kids actually enjoying themselves in a music video. Let's face it, whenever you see children in a music video, the odds are that they're there, swaying along self-consciously, to prop up some drippy ballad about world peace, the environment or - worst of all - Christmas. They seem to be having a lot more fun here, throwing metal shapes and playing air guitar (and check out the cardboard guitar on the left of the front row - it's 1979 all over again).

The last point that occurred to me was that, back when this came out in 1983, if a primary school child turned up wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt they would most likely have earned a trip to the Headmaster's office pretty sharply. Now look. You can't say that nothing's changed for the better in the last 20 years.

Page 3 Metal

2011-01-30T19:47:00.000+01:00

(Warning: contains images of red underwear)

As Kerrang got up and running in 1981, it was only a matter of time before metal bands realised that a full colour magazine dedicated entirely to them offered up possibilities that smudgy old black and White Sounds never could. One of the first to exploit this was Judas Priest, who in Kerrang no. 10 in February 1982 appeared in a photo spread with Penthouse Pet Cheryl Rixon. You can see it below (warning: it's maybe NSFW. Unless you work for Silvio Berlusconi).

Looking at it now, it's kind of endearing that Judas Priest - an established band that had toured the world - when given the chance to indulge their sexual fantasies came up with something that could have appeared on The Benny Hill Show. I bet they even had a cup of tea afterwards.

What's interesting about it all it is that it caused a fuss. The letters pages in subsequent issues were notably full of letters complaining about the sexism of the photo spread. One reader complained that:

In one foul swoop Kerrang! has plummeted from being 'The Times' of heavy rock to being the 'Daily Star'. No wonder heavy rock is damned for being sexist if the critics see this sort of trash.

Thankfully, the editors never acted on the suggestion below from X, a "Sue Barker lookalike":

Now the way I see it, that was done solely for the pleasure of the male readers. To make it fair and give some pleasure to the female readers, you should've had Priest romping around in their undies in the final picture.

You get the feeling that the Kerrang editors, who probably cut their journalistic teeth with the strippers and dwarves at Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin press launches in the 70s, didn't realise that this was now the 80s and things were changing.

At the same time, it was all publicity, and other bands were hardly going to let Priest get all the centre spreads. Certainly not the ambitious and well-managed Iron Maiden, and you can imagine that Rod Smallwood was on the phone to the model agency as soon as he saw the pictures. The result was the centrefold "Maiden's Maiden" that appeared in the very same issue as the letters quoted above.

There's something a bit desperate about this picture. You can imagine the model wondering to herself how it got to this. From almost making it onto the Kenny Everett Video Show to posing in red drawers while being groped by an Iron Maiden roadie wearing a rubber latex mask.

Of course, after all this excitement, Kerrang then realised that attitudes were changing and decided to grow up, stopping this malarkey and focusing on the music. Only joking. Of course they didn't. Future issues gave ample space to great talents such as Lee Aaron, Bitch and Pandora, all testing the tensile strength of elasticated fabrics.

Barbaric Gardians & Bestial Malevolance

2010-11-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

I was on the road last week. Well, when I say "on the road", I mean I was on a trip for my work, but given the subject matter of the blog, I think I should say on the road, so that you imagine me rattling along in the back of a transit van drinking Scrumpy Jack, instead of sipping over-priced coffee on an inter-city.

Anyway, while I was there, I had some free time and found a second hand record shop to browse in. Among my haul from this was a vinyl copy of Black Metal by Venom. I was never a big Venom fan back in the day, so it was good to finally pick up a pretty battered copy of this record. Look, that's it up there.

Later on that day I was sitting in a cafeteria having a coffee and I decided that I'd dig out the records I bought to have a look at the damn things. Now, at this point I realised that a vinyl copy of Black Metal is pretty conspicuous when you take it out in public. Then, I noticed that at the table next to me was a family, a young couple with two little children, the younger of whom was in a pram right next to me. At this point my imagination started running away with me. Could this 1982 Venom album from Neat Records, with its spelling mistakes on the back cover, cast a malignant spell over this baby? I decided to put it back in its carrier bag before the cafe shook from Carmina Burana, trusting that the couple of millimetres of polythene would protect the child from any dark influence of Cronos ("rabid captor of bestial malevolance"), Abaddon ("barbaric gardian to the 7 gates of Hell") or Mantas (below, "grand master of Hades and Mayhem". And white leather trainers). What can I say? The coffee is strong over here.

That got me to thinking that the demise of vinyl has reduced the potential for your favourite bands to cause you awkward moments with their product artwork. Kids of today downloading their music will never have to worry about their mum seeing their copy of Lovehunter" or the guidance teacher walking in when they're giving a friend their copy of "Reign in Blood". I think they're missing out.

Te Estoy Amando Locamente

2010-10-06T14:20:00.002+02:00

The term "Flamenco Rock" probably makes most people think of the Gypsy Kings. Nothing wrong with them of course, after all their version of Hotel California is much more fun than the original. However, when flamenco and rock first met head on back in the mid 70s, the result was very different indeed, and that's what I'd like to talk about here. So, ladies and gentlemen, take a seat - not that one, the cat likes to sit there - and pour yourself a glass of manzanilla, because I'm going to tell you the incredible but true story of one of the most remarkable bands that you've probably never heard of: Las Grecas.

Las Grecas - Amma Immi (Gipsy Rock, 1974)

Las Grecas were Carmela and Tina Munoz Barrull, two sisters of gypsy descent who grew up in the dirt poor outskirts of Madrid in the 60s and 70s. When their father left home, Carmela and her younger sister starting performing flamenco in some of the local tablaos, and soon folk were talking about these pretty gypsy girls who would sing flamenco in unision, something that was then practically unheard of. CBS signed them up, and then had a great idea: they teamed them up with some of their best rock session musicians to see what would happen.

The results probably surprised even them. Their first single, Te Estoy Amando Locamente ("I'm loving you Crazily" - sounds better in Spanish) stomped its way up the charts Wuthering Heights-style to the No. 1 position in 1974, where it stayed for 5 weeks. Grecamania gripped a dusty old Spain in the dog days of Franco's regime, and their first album, Gipsy Rock, was both hugely successful and influential - the flamenco guitarist Paco De Lucia used the decending melody of the hit single as the basis for his best known piece, Entre Dos Aguas.
They were stars. They bought a beige cadillac and an apartment in one of the more chi chi areas of Madrid. The second album, Mucho Mas, was also pretty good, but then the hits started to dry up. They released two more albums and finally called it a day in 1979. Five years. not a bad innings for the 70s.

Las Grecas - Bella Kali (Gipsy Rock, 1974)

It would be nice to end the story here. In a parallel world much happier than our own, Las Grecas lived out their lives happily in comfortable obscurity. In our world however, their lives were tossed into a maelstrom. First of all was the old story, they were swindled out of money. After sacking their manager, they found themselves effectively blacklisted by the industry. They couldn't work and they were broke. Carmela was the first to snap, trying to commit suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills and then posing naked for a gossip magazine.Then Tina started suffering mental health problems. She was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and in 1983 tried to kill her sister, attacking her with a knife, plunging it into her shoulder. She spent the next 9 years in and out of prison and hospitals and was often seen wandering the streets of Madrid homeless. She died in 1992 at the age of 38.

There's no happy ending I'm afraid. In fact, it ends in farce. Carmela tried to return in the 90s without much success, with a new singer replacing her late sister. Then, the said singer then ended up somehow registering and obtaining the rights to the name Las Grecas. She currently performs under this name with another new singer, neither of whom had anything to do with the original group. There's no business like show business.

Gipsy Rock is available on iTunes and has also just been reissued on vinyl. You can also find a couple of compilations under the name Por Siempre Grecas on Amazon. As always with these compilations, Vol 1, which covers the early years, is the one to go for. You can see them performing the big hit on some godawful Spanish version of Top of the Pops below.

The Checked Drawers of Destiny

2010-09-29T13:03:00.000+02:00

What's your favourite Black Sabbath album? Don't be coy now, I can't imagine that anyone who comes by this blog doesn't have a favourite Sabbath record. Me, I sometimes lean towards Paranoid, but if push comes to shove I'll probably choose the last decent album they made with Ozzy: Sabotage.

In the same way that Ozzy Osbourne is now famous for advertising World of Warcraft and yelling "Shaaaaron!", Sabotage these days is probably best known for appearing on Worst Album Cover of All Time Lists, rubbing shoulders with dodgy country and hip hop records. I've always thought that bands should be able to change or update album covers when they're reissued, in the same way that paperback books are (I'm sure Blind Faith would agree with this idea). Perhaps then, Sabotage would be looked at differently. Which it deserves to be, because it's a remarkable record.

It's remarkable because it's mental. It was made after Sabbath learned that they had been swindled out of heaps of cash due to dodgy deals and that despite having sold millions of records they were poor as church mice. Well, maybe not church mice. Agnostic mice. You know what I mean. Anyway, the resulting album is the Black Sabbath album that really should be called Paranoid. Songs display wild mood swings, gonzoid riffs one minute, chilled out hippy stuff the next: Symptom of the Universe, Thrill of it All, The Writ, none of these were taking their tablets according to the prescription. Sabbath were never really there for the nice things in life, but they never made anything else quite as angry and paranoid as Sabotage. The album is characterised by a furious and impotent anger at their problems, like Caliban raging at his reflection in the water. It's bloody brilliant.

And then they got rubbish. Their next album, Technical Ecstasy, is awful. Full of songs with titles (Rock & Roll Doctor, Dirty Women, Gypsy) that even Whitesnake would have thought twice about. They never recovered.

Footnote: You know that little piece of music "Blow on a jug" that they tagged on to the end of the album? Well, I have to confess that when I first heard I wondered if it was really part of the record or if their record company had pressed the album on top of another one. My 13 year old self hadn't really figured out the whole record making process. To be fair to him, the record was the reissue on the cheap-as-chips NEMS label. Anything was possible with that crowd.

A Real Champion

2010-09-23T14:05:00.000+02:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm fascinated by those albums where a successful band loses the plot. The dogs of the back catalogue. Those Heavy Metal Titus Andronicuses that muck up the discography of your favourite bands and single-handedely shrink the size of the sporting arenas they play during their tours. And as wrong passes go, it's pretty damn difficult to beat Music From The Elder by Kiss.

We've done a lot of "Fuck Me Suck Me" songs and we thought we'd like to go a slightly different route - Paul Stanley, 1982

Kiss were in trouble in 1981. Sales had been falling dramatically over the last couple of years. For some reason, fans didn't really take to them doing things like releasing 4 solo albums on the same day. Or making low-budget sci-fi movies. Or going disco. Something had to be be done. So when you're a band who'd made their name with catchy pop-rock anthems, the answer was obvious: make a concept album about a boy selected by an ancient order of elders to be trained to combat the forces of evil.

The album kicks off promisingly. The Oath has a strong riff and rattles along impressively, until we get to the lyrics at which point Kiss fans hearing this for the first time must have been wondering why Paul Stanley was singing about forged tempered-steel blades and ancient doors lost in the midst instead of banging groupies. The the fun begins. I have this theory that the second track on any album will give you a measure as to what's in store and whether it's going to be a classic or a clunker. The second track here is Fanfare, which gives you a couple of minutes of baroque noodling on some trumpets. On a Kiss album. In reality, Fanfare is doing exactly what a fanfare should do - it's making an announcement. And that announcement is: Here comes trouble. Because the next 30 minutes or so are hilariously awful, sounding like a cross between This is Spinal Tap and those mid seventies Alice Cooper albums that people remember fondly but never listen to anymore. The final track I, is a decent piece of glam metal but it comes too little, too late.

Still, the low sales and poor reception to Music From The Elder had one positive outcome: it scared the life out of Kiss and spurred them into making the straightforward Creatures of the Night, their last really good album. After that it was all downhill: they took off the make-up and made duller and duller records, till they ended up looking (and sounding) like Cinderella's elder brothers.

A (surprisingly good) live version of The Oath from US TV around the time of the album's release is below.

Silverwing: Unarmed & Ready

2010-09-14T18:48:00.003+02:00

With the news that Mr H is going to unleash a NWOBHM special on an unsuspecting internet via his Get Ready to Rock Radio show, and that the playlist to this show will include Silverwing, I thought I'd share with you the photo above, one of the more striking band images from my collection of early Kerrang!s. Looking at the image what comes into your mind? The Lidl Duran Duran, perhaps? Grampian TV's version of The Six Million Dollar Man? So many thoughts can run through your head it's easy to see why Kerrang said at the time that they "remain an enigma outside of their home town of Macclesfield".

The full page photo appeared in Kerrang! no 14 (the same one which had Wikkyd Vikker among the bands in the Armed & Ready section) and overleaf we were also treated to "Silverwing's Personal Kolumn", which featured the band's answers to that odd questionnaire that Kerrang! sent out to bands at that time, where questions such as Date of Birth and Favourite Book shared the foolscap with Favourite Perversion and Size of the Prize. The answers to the questionnaire bring some long-forgotten flotsam and jetsam of 1982 back to your mind as, for example, "Sian Adley-Jones" and "Thereza Bazar" are listed among the answers to Sex Object. Then, lead guitarist Trevor Kirkpatrick catches you unawares somewhat by listing "T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Thomas Hardy's poems" as his favourite books. Unfortunately though, he then breaks the spell by then listing "OTT" as his favourite TV show and "12 year old girls" as his favourite perversion. 1982 was a different world.

Fighting Your Way up the Charts

2010-09-08T13:23:00.001+02:00

I was reading this post on Mr H's Bleat blog about when Heavy Metal bands would appear fairly regularly on Top of the Pops. Among the clips he has on show is the one above, Girlschool playing - alright miming along to - Hit & Run back in 1981 or so. I remember watching this, and I even went out and bought the single. Unfortunately, however, not so many other folk did, because the notable thing about this TOTP performance is that the single actually went down in the charts the next week. Which was quite an achievement because it was only at no. 44 or so in the first place. I bet they weren't expecting that. I bet their record company wasn't expecting that either.

A Singles Chart formed out of healthy sales is a cruel taskmaster. One of the thrills about following the singles chart back in the early 80s was watching one of your favourite singles fight its way up the placings. Singles had a lifetime, and you knew that if they'd gone up 5 or 7 places a couple of weeks back but only 1 or 2 places last week, then they'd probably got as far as they were going to go. This was annoying when they were knocking at the Top Ten: AC/DC still haven't had a Top Ten hit in the UK, their best placing is No. 12 (Heatseeker), while they've also been at 13 (twice), 14, 15 (twice) and 16. Even more bitter sweet was when your band's song stalled at No. 2. I can still remember the helpless frustration of watching Dr Hook's When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman stubbornly keeping Crazy Little Thing Called Love off of the top spot. Still, at least Queen already had a no. 1; Marillion surely knew they were never going to get closer to no. 1 when Kayleigh stalled at no. 2 in May 1985.

Later, as singles sales plummeted, Top Ten hits became ten a penny and it was quite normal for songs to appear on the charts in high positions and then go down the next week, especially if the band had a strong fanbase. I doubt if many of Iron Maiden's singles from the late 80s and 90s actually went up the charts. Maiden of course, have a no. 1 single: Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter. Still, it was only because loyal fans went out and bought the thing on the first week of release. It didn't count for much, not really, and a set list from their current tour makes the point: Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter is nowhere to be seen, while they finish with Running Free, which fought its way to the giddy heights of No. 34 in February 1980.

Cover Stars

2010-08-13T20:18:00.001+02:00

There is a great Flickr set of old (and I mean old) Kerrang! covers which you can find over here. What I find interesting when I'm browsing through them are not the ones featuring Heavy Metal Royalty like AC/DC or Iron Maiden, but the ones that have you squinting your eyes, leaning forward and going "who's that? Aldo .... Nova ....who?"

I sort of remember Aldo Nova. I remember Kerrang! in 1982 pushing him as the next big thing from the US. Until they realised that Motley Crue were the sort of big things the States were going to produce, upon which Aldo Nova already seemed dated. Which is kind of impressive when you think about it.

Other curious cover stars included Baron Rojo, who made it onto the cover of No. 27 in October 21 - November 3, 1982. A fact that makes you suspect that the release schedule was a bit light on big names in October 21 - November 3, 1982. British headbangers in 1982 just weren't ready for a Spanish Heavy Metal band (though they were probably more receptive to the centrefold of Lee Aaron showing off her knockers while dressed in hooker chic). You'll notice that both of these issues had free flex discs; they weren't stupid.

Or maybe they were, because just two issues later they put Budgie on their cover. Budgie! In 1982!

I always thought Budgie were silly. Think I'm being unfair? OK, have a look at this and then this and come back. There, I'm glad we've got that settled. Budgie were on their last legs in 1982, but, to be fair that's not unusual when you look at the acts that made the cover in Kerrang!'s first year. In 1982, bands like Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and Rainbow were breathing their last. While even newer bands like Saxon, Motorhead, Iron Maiden and AC/DC had made their best albums (though some of those went on to be successful all the same). Kerrang!'s first year was remarkably backwards-looking. It's interesting that the magazine has survived so long.

Strangers & Long-Awaited Friends

2010-08-04T13:03:00.003+02:00

Me and Rush go back a long way. Perhaps like a lot of folk I got into them via the presence of albums like Fly By Night and 2112 in an elder brother's record collection. It also probably helped that just when I was starting to buy records they were at their commercial (and arguably artistic) peak, making albums like Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures. Anyway, I bought a lot of their albums up until the ones in the mid 80s when keyboards started to dominate and I lost interest.

I'm mentioning this because I've just watched Beyond the Lighted Stage, the new documentary about them and it's very good. In many ways it sets a template for a band documentary, with a strong, revelatory opening about their youth and early years followed by a trail through their story that doesn't focus too much on any one period while neglecting others. And it's helped by the subject matter themselves who prove to be surprisingly good company. I never expected them to be prima donnas, but I didn't expect them to be so good-natured and funny. there's a scene at the end of the film where they've having dinner (and getting merrily drunk) at a hunting lodge. Even Neil Peart, who comes across as reserved and a bit prickly, relaxes in the atmosphere, and there's real affection on show. It's all genuinely touching.

The film ends with their career on an upswing, and if the film can be said to have an agenda, it seems to be that it wants to be the first broadside in a battle to change Rush's image and make them cool (I was going to write "rehabilitate" there, but I realised that they never were really "habilitated" - they've always been deadly uncool). This probably explains the choice of the talking heads (Trent Raznor, Jack Black, Billy Corgan), which seems to make the point that not only science students like Rush, people with good haircuts and tattoos also like them. They're shown making an appearance on The Colbert Report, where the host expresses outrage that they're not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

And yet ... is this what Rush fans want? Rush can't really be short of money. They have a large back catalogue that has presumably ticked over pretty nicely for over 30 years, and they can fill arenas (and stadia in Brazil) whenever they want to tour. Do we really want to see them being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Bono giving a video message where he calls Tom Sawyer a "Hymn"? Do we want talent show contestants and models wearing 2112 Tour Shirts? In the film, Geddy Lee calls Rush the "world's biggest cult band". He's probably right. And probably happy about it that way too.

Freddie Mercury Makes a Bad Decision

2010-07-18T23:23:00.001+02:00

I'm fascinated by the moments when acts momentarily lose the plot. Those occasions when desperation, a cocaine habit or just sheer wrong-headedness convince them that it would be a good idea to go off in a new bold, direction. Maybe release an album that could be the soundtrack to a film about a race of people called The Elder that the bass player has just thought up? Or how about a double album of instrumentals about plants? Clear a space on the wall for the platinum disc, Jeeves!

Queen had their wobbly moment in 1982. In a sense it was unexpected; they were following-up an album, The Game, that had got to number one in the UK and US, and had yielded two no. 1 singles in the latter country. One of those was Another One Bites the Dust, and it's tempting to imagine that Freddie Mercury concluded from this that, you know,maybe their fans would love to hear more funk and disco songs.

The result was Hot Space, a dog of an album where half the songs were unsuccessful attempts at sounding like Chic, while the other half were unsuccessful attempts at sounding like Queen. Some of the much-maligned funk stuff isn't that bad: both Staying Power and Body Language have plenty of hooks. It's the rock songs that are the real clunkers: Brian May's Las Palabras De Amor is the wettest thing he ever wrote, while it probably takes longer to listen to Calling All Girls than it took Roger Taylor to write it. The final track is Under Pressure, which was recorded and released a year before the rest of the album and sits there on the track listing like a university student at a family party, aloof and slightly embarrassed.

Yet, Hot Space was an important album for the group because it had a legacy. Queen weren't stupid, and learned their lesson. They came back in 1984 with The Works, which gave them a clutch of hits and some fresh momentum. But it was an unadventurous, by-the-numbers album, and as the 80s progressed, their records got duller and duller. A band once known for being innovative and taking risks settled into churning out tame corporate rock that had you yearning for a few Bismillahs or Galileos. Or maybe even some funky bass lines and horn arrangements. No, on second thoughts, maybe not.

The Italian Wave of British Heavy Metal

2010-03-21T18:15:00.003+01:00

Over here in Italy there's a very good magazine called Classix Metal, that devotes itself to writing about 80s Heavy Metal of all shades. It's essentially a well-produced fanzine (which is surely the only way to describe a publication that has a nine page Raven retrospective or an article on Mausoleum Records). Still, it's all the better for it, meaning that it's enthusiastic about its subject matter and doesn't take itself too seriously.

In a recent issue there was an article that traced the history of Heavy Metal in Italy. This was interesting to me, as I don't normally associate sunny, Mediterranean countries with Heavy Metal (I'm trying to think of what could be the Italian version of Birmingham - Turin? Not quite the same).

One thing that struck me was that a lot of the Italian bands had names that would make the UKIP proud: Gunfire, Spitfire, Royal Air Force, Steel Crown and my personal favourite - Drunkards. It's an often overlooked fact how NWOBHM bands promoted British culture abroad - well, if you can call wearing a sleeveless Union Jack shirt promoting culture. Nonetheless, the net effect was that in the 80s, there were a raft of European Metal Bands being formed who had names straight out of the Warlord or Victor comics.

Having said all that, the band that really made an impression were the tastefully-named Death SS. The band were active from the late 70s until the late 80s and seem to have been a cross between Alice Cooper, Kiss and Scooby Doo Where Are You? You can see a picture of them from 1980 below (I scanned it directly from the magazine as I didn't fancy putting "Death SS picture" into Google).

And in case you're wondering - and I know you are - the Mummy played bass.

Still, everybody needs to move with the times (even a band with songs called Zombie Terror and Black Mummy), and as the 80s progressed Death SS, like so many other bands, weren't immune to the increasing popularity of Hair Metal. Look at the photo below from 1988.

Def Leppard meets the Wolf Man! Even the Mummy had a soft perm. The faun seems to have turned into a badger, too.

10 Random Thoughts on "Heavy Metal Britannia"

2010-03-12T23:45:00.000+01:00

1. All that "proto-metal" stuff with Blue Cheer, Cream and the Edgar Broughton Band etc didn't really convince and took up too much time. Metal is about more than just hitting the instruments hard, and as good as those bands were, I'm listening to the first Black Sabbath album as I write this, and none of these bands really anticipate or predict it. It all starts here.

2. Rob Halford seems a decent bloke.

3. Hasn't Brian Tatler off of Diamond Head aged badly? And since when were Diamond Head as important as Saxon and Iron Maiden?

4. Deep Purple's music hasn't aged too well. And they weren't really metal. Well, maybe "Speed King"

5. Burke Shelley is a bit of an arse

6. Bill Ward has a hell of a boozer's nose. But he seems a lovely man.

7. Judas Priest's influence is overlooked. If you look at the NWOBHM bands, their sound can be traced back to Black Sabbath - but they sound more like Judas Priest.

8. Most Heavy Metal musicians aren't very articulate when it comes to defining Heavy Metal: "It's kind of .. you know, heavy"

9. Mick Box's interesting "ear flaps" theory that bands were protected from the noise from the amplifiers because ears "face forward" is an interesting one, but may not stand up to rigorous scientific examination.

10. "Symptom of the Universe" was a perfect choice for the song over the credits. Be honest.

Backpatchphilia

2009-11-15T19:28:00.001+01:00

The photo above is of the audience at a concert by The Rods back in 1982. I think it captures being a Metal fan at that time perfectly. Everything is in attendance: the Wrangler (never Levi as I recall) denim jackets (sleeves optional), the dank brown hair a bit longer than the fashion at the time but not too long to get into trouble at school/work, the biker jacket and the wispy moustaches. It's a more innocent time, a time when Then Rods could leave people open-mouthed (or at least slack-jawed). And, naturally, there's the patches.

If I had an ounce of creativity or entrepreneurship, I would call up on of those Art Book publishers like Taschen with a proposal for a coffee table book called The Art of the Heavy Metal Back Patch. All of the classics of the genre would be there of course: the Judas Priest Razor Blade, the Motorhead Snaggletooth (or whatever it's called), the AC/DC cannon, the Number of the Beast album cover (surely an album cover that was designed to look good on a Backpatch on a denim jacket). I'm sure the book would sell more than you might think.

The one limitation about the different patches was that your selection was relatively limited, and you needed to rely on what was popular and being produced at the time. If you wanted to express your loyalty to someone who was a bit more obscure you needed to resort to your own art skills. Which is why my follow-up book would be Heavy Metal Art on School Jotters 1979 - 1985. I'm sure the lofts of Britain contain some excellent examples of school jotters containing fascinating interpretations of the Kiss Destroyer album cover done with felt pens or the words Black and Sabbath arranged in an upside-down cross that made the English teacher go ballistic. Apart from anything else, the actual act of trying to cover your school books with art gave you an idea on the exact level of your artistic abilities; I'm sure quite a few people realised that a career in illustration would be beyond them as they struggled with the horse while trying to do the Stormbringer cover.

Solid Ball of Pewter

2009-10-06T13:27:00.001+02:00

Anyone remember these? Jewelery for headbangers was a fairly specialist industry back in the day. Usually this meant skin-rashing pendants made of pewter (whatever pewter is, I can't find it anywhere in the precious metals section of the periodic table), but the ones above were actually made of silver. Bet that Magnum one sold like hot cakes.

Kerrang! Penpals Konfidential

2009-09-29T18:25:00.001+02:00

I don't suppose anyone has penpals any more, and it's just another word heading for obsolescence thanks to the internet. After all, if you can do things like connect with people in real time via MSN Messenger and Facebook, or post comments on their infrequently-updated blogs, would you really feel the need to spend your time writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg?

Back in the 80s of course, it was all different. As it was difficult to post pictures of yourself drunk online via a Spectrum 48K, people had to write letters to each other, and if you were looking for people with similar interests to yourself to add to your burgeoning Social Network, then there were few better places to look than the Penpals! page in Kerrang! This page became one of the surprise hits of the early magazine as the sheer numbers of people wanting to advertise themselves in the Klassifieds section became too large that they eventually decided to make it a free service and dedicate an entire page to it.

Reading through some old issues from 1982, you quickly see that there was a basic format for each entry, along the lines of

Male Headbanger 18, into Maiden, Sabbath, AC/DC and Motorhead, looking to write to female headbangers aged 17 -23. If interested, please drop a line with photo to "Mad" Phil Rocker, 22 Acacia Ave, Bury, Lancs.

Of course this was just the basic format and as with all courtship rituals, the one who could stand out from the crowd was guaranteed the most suitors. One way you could do this was to list an act or two among your faves who were not among the most commonly-mentioned bands. You had to be careful here, though as "Yes, Eloy and Magnum" tended to conjure up images of bedroom walls covered with Roger Dean posters, while "The Rods, Dumpy's Rusty Nuts and Anvil" promised nights out drinking Woodpecker cider at the local biker bar. Neither of which boded too well for attracting chicks. If this strategy failed, another way was to pluck up the courage to post a picture of yourself staring seriously into the camera of the photo booth at the Train station.

One thing you notice reading through the entries is how many of the folk suffered from the "only headbanger in the village" syndrome, evident as you read things like "Lonely HM Freak" and "Wales is crap for what I call decent long-haired blokes". The last one seems to suggest that Wales was ok for indecent long-haired blokes. Which sounds about right, to be honest.

In League with Venom

2009-09-09T20:05:00.001+02:00

Back in the days before music magazines felt any obligation to stick free music to the cover of their publications, I sent off 2.99 plus p&p (allowing 28 days for delivery) to sounds or Kerrang! (can't remember which, Sounds I think) for a sampler tape for Neat Records. That's right, I, and who knows how many others, effectively paid for Neat's marketing budget. When it arrived, it had tracks from all kinds of NWOBHM bands on the label's roster. All of them rubbish. Apart from one. It didn't sound like anything else on the tape. The drums sounded like knitting needles being struck against pillows (a sound I knew very well) and the quality of the production sounded as though the entire recording budget had been 2.99 plus p&p. It was, of course, Bursting Out by Venom.

It's easy to forget what a stir Venom caused when they first came out. Kerrang! never really knew what to make of them, giving them bad reviews one issue and then putting in weird (and silly) 3D photosets of them in the next one. They made two albums and built up such a following (despite never touring) that Neat expected their third album to make the Top 40 of all places. Something that Tommy Vance practically guaranteed. On the Friday Rock Show, he described their single Warhead as one of these songs that comes along every so often that changes music. Or similar words. He also bet the then Radio 1 Breakfast Show DJ Mike Reed 100 pounds that he wouldn't play it on his show. Which of course he then did ("He's got a lotta bottle" said Vance afterwards).

The success went to their heads. Third album At War With Satan had a pretentious cover, and - uh-oh- the title track was a 20 minute concept piece. Venom and 20 minute concept pieces made uneasy bedfellows if you ask me. I prefer to remember them via this story from Kerrang! no. 24 from September 1982.

(Cronos) had been unable to contain himself from pawing the unfortunate females at his local Mecca Centre. He was hastily ejected after numerous complaints to the management and aided by two fellow rogues-in-arms proceeded to repleat his revenge on some innocent, unsuspecting campers on a nearby holiday camp, by donating them a sound kicking for their troubles. However, Cronos was given away by the motif etched into his jacket ... VENOM, and was brought to his just deserts.

Thrown out of his local Mecca Centre, eh? Lay down your soul to the gods Rock & Roll!

Hollywood Teases

2009-08-23T17:55:00.000+02:00

I go along completely with the theory that the best period of Top of the Pops happens to be exactly at the time that you started to watch it. In my case, this meant 1979 or 80 or so. And to be fair, it was a good time for the show: Blondie, Kate Bush, Two Tone, Iron Maiden playing live, and a bunch of New Wave weirdos that you simply can't imagine getting on the TV any more (Lene Lovich, Flying Lizards etc etc). And every now and again you got groups performing who had no right to be there at all, as in when Girl appeared playing Hollywood Tease.

Lord knows how they got on. A last minute cancellation of some other act, surely. Perhaps the singer in Darts had a stomach bug or Liquid Gold's tour bus got stuck in traffic just outside of Peterborough. Whatever the reason, they gave a fantastic performance (my memory has singer Philip Lewis performing standing behind the drummer, but it's been a long time) and I went out and bought the single. Unfortunately, not too many other folk did, and the Polyhex archives has it peaking at No. 50, and spending a mighty 3 weeks in the Top 75.

Despite being signed to a major (Jet), Girl never managed to break through. One reason was bad timing: while other NWOBHM acts were strapping on bullet belts and biker jackets, they looked like a cross between Alice Cooper and Aerosmith. In 5 years time, about every Metal band bothering the charts and going platinum would look like a cross between Alice Cooper and Aerosmith. But not in 1980. Even Alice Cooper didn't look like Alice Cooper in 1980. The other reason may be, that, well, though they had great singles like Hollywood Tease and the even better My Number, their album Sheer Greed wasn't great.

I couldn't find the TOTP appearance on YouTube, but the promo video was there and is below.

Welcome

2009-08-23T17:52:00.000+02:00

Hello there, and welcome to the blog. I've been blogging at The Earl of Hell's Waistcoat for a while, writing lame posts about Scotch food & drink, Italy and early 80s Heavy Metal. I've decided that it would be a good idea to start a blog where every now and again I take something from my record collection and write a post about it.

Please note that I take great pride in the relentless unfashionability of my record collection, so if you stick around, you're much more likely to see a post about Queen, Rainbow or Angel Witch than you are about Joy Division or The Clash. You have been warned.

All music streamed on this blog is for sampling purposes only. If you like it (and there's a good chance that you won't), go and buy the stuff. Any problems, contact me via my profile.