Sunday, October 31, 2010

Wishbone Ash. The King Will Come. 1976.



An underrated guitar shredder's masterpiece. Pick up the album Argus, circa 1972 for maximum aural carpet bombing.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Blasphemer - Sodom, 1985(?)



Thanks for the heads up on this monster, from former/perpetual Tight Bro, Quitty. Miss you, Blood.

From Quitty:
"The guitarist on "In the Sign of Evil" is Grave Violator... My friend and I had a joke at the time that his brothers were Parking Violator and Personal Space Violator."

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Happy Birthday - Ellie Greenwich



Ellie would have turned 70 today. She blew up the Brill Building in the 60's writing such hits as Leader of the Pack and this monster which reportedly put Spector over the edge. Spector paid Ike $20,000 to stay away from the studio during the recording and an additional $22,000 on production, which is probably why he scrimped (with fabulous results) on this promo for the song.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Turn To Stone - Joe Walsh, 1977.



I know I'm not the first one to say it, and I'll fuck a hole in the ground if I am the last . . . Fuck The Eagles.

It was right philanthropic of Joe to lend them a bit of credibility by lighting up one of his old Barnstorm ('72 LP - Get it) tracks at this Eagles show in '77.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Sylvia/Hocus Pocus - Focus, 1972.



Hey, it's fucking Focus.

Hey Grandma - Moby Grape, 1967(?)



Skip's still looking and playing pretty good.

From Wikipedia:

During the recording session of Moby Grape's second album, Wow, in 1968, Spence attempted to break down a bandmate's hotel room door with a fire axe, while under the influence of LSD. Spence's deterioration in New York and the "fire axe incident" are described by bandmate Jerry Miller as follows: "Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people there that were into harder drugs and a harder lifestyle, and some very weird shit. And so he kind of flew off with those people. Skippy kind of disappeared for a little while. Next time we saw him, he had cut off his beard,[8] and was wearing a black leather jacket, with his chest hanging out, with some chains and just sweating like a son of a gun. I don't know what the hell he got a hold of, man, but it just whacked him. And the next thing I know, he axed my door down in the Albert Hotel.[9] They said at the reception area that this crazy guy had held an axe to the doorman's head." [10]

As described by bandmate Peter Lewis, it appears that both Jerry Miller and bandmade Don Stevenson were targets of Spence: "We had to do (the album) in New York because the producer (David Rubinson) wanted to be with his family. So we had to leave our families and spend months at a time in hotel rooms in New York City. Finally I just quit and went back to California. I got a phone call after a couple of days. They'd played a Fillmore East gig without me, and Skippy took off with some black witch afterward who fed him full of acid. It was like that scene in The Doors movie. He thought he was the anti-Christ. He tried to chop down the hotel room door with a fire axe to kill Don (Stevenson) to save him from himself. He went up to the 52nd floor of the CBS building where they had to wrestle him to the ground. And Rubinson pressed charges against him. They took him to The Tombs (and then to Bellevue) and that's where he wrote Oar. When he got out of there, he cut that album in Nashville. And that was the end of his career. They shot him full of Thorazine for six months. They just take you out of the game."

Monday, October 18, 2010

Telephone Blues - The Rats, 1969.



That's Mick Ronson of the Spiders From Mars chewing through the guitar cable.

Ramblin' Rose - MC5, 1970.



Brother Wayne on falsetto and lead guitar. Can I cat an 'Amen'?

Coven. Dignitaries of Hell. 1969.



Once thought to be the diabolical soundtrack to the Tate-La Bianca murders, Coven were considered the first of the doom/goth groups shredding stateside. Rolling Stone magazine even called Sabbath "an English version of Coven."

This song,“Dignitaries of Hell,” accurately describes the demons of the dark arts and their respective ranks and habits. Pretty serious Ghostbusters shit, dudes.

Jinx Dawson, the blonde fox lead singer, has quite the back story herself. From Wikipedia:

Jinx Dawson was a native of Indianapolis, Indiana born on a Friday the 13th (they said it was Jan 13, 1950). The difficult delivery of twins, one dead in the womb, was performed by a Dr. Jinks, so her model mother named her Jinx. She began studying opera and the occult, following in her family's secret society footsteps. She, Ross, and Osborne formed Coven in Chicago in the late 1960s.[1] In 1967 to 1968 they toured on concert bills with Jimmy Page's Yardbirds, the Alice Cooper band, and Vanilla Fudge, among many others. Jinx began and ended each Coven concert with the sign of the horns, being the first to introduce this hand sign into rock pop culture.

Sounds like my kind of gal.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Flied Egg. Guide me to the Quietness. 1971.



Debut from the Japanese face incinerators, Flied Egg.

Read Julian Cope totally dress these dudes down in his review here.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Cocklewood Monster - Silver Metre, 1970.



Um, Casey . . . Do you realize how close to extinction the human race was in 1970? The fact that a Blue Cheer guitarist teamed up with Jeff Becks drummer could have gotten heavy enough to create a black hole. I guess it's a thing they added a pinch of Jefferson Airplane as a buffering agent.

Denny Kills It . . . .



Dude went on to write software. I have no doubt that his code is clean.