Month: May 2013

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BTO’s Greatest – Bachman-Turner Overdrive

If I have to be honest this is not the greatest of that wonderess of bands Bachman-Turner Overdrive. If you want to hear their best stuff then just get the Not Fragile album and remove “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”.

However, as a start this is good. It does contain some stuttering song about blue eyes and it’s a shame as although it is their most well-known song it is not one of the best. My personal highlights are:

  • Hey You
  • Roll On Down The Highway
  • Freeways
  • Let It Ride
  • Rock and Roll Nights

I guess it is hard to create a “Best” album. Music taste is so subjective. I do not think this ranks anywhere high. See my review of Not Fragile in about six months time to get an idea of what I think of a great album. This album doesn’t even have “She’s a Devil” because as we all know: “Her hair is the colour of fire”.

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Broken – Nine Inch Nails

The first NIN album in this list. I’ve seen them twice but never really got into them around university time. So, The Downward Spiral wasn’t my first Nine Inch Nails album. This one, along with Fixed, was my first NIN album. A friend was giving away some music as he had just got a new girlfriend and needed the space in the house to put her stuff. I got some NIN and Rammstein.

This is a very good album. It has that raw, industrial sound that I really liked for about 15 years. NIN along with Ministry really broke new ground and paved the way for bands like Slipknot.

Highlights:

  • Pinion
  • Wish
  • Last
  • Happiness in Slavery

I do happen to think that the Fixed album has better versions but this is still great. Well worth putting on at any time but mostly an autumn album. Definitely not for the summer time!

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Brave New World – Iron Maiden

This is probably the last “new” album by Iron Maiden that I bought. There were some duff ones from “Fear of the Dark” and I gave up for a while. I’m not really sure why I got this but it may have been to do with seeing them at Earl’s Court Arena.

This album opens with “The Wicker Man” which is a good song and classic, it has nice pace and rocks along. “Ghost of the Navigator”, “Brave New World”, “Blood Brothers” are all good songs. After that I start to lose interest in the album. I think that, perhaps, the Maiden sound only takes me so far now.

Overall, this is a good album. It’s not like the first seven studio albums but it is good. My main issue with Maiden at the moment is Jannick Gers. The band doesn’t need three guitarists. Mind you, I’m very much looking forward to seeing them at Download this year [probably because they are playing all the old stuff].

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Boys In Heat – Britny Fox

This album was originally bought on vinyl, I can’t remember why but it was probably in the rock/metal section and the cover looked good. It’s very much an album of cockrock and a good one at that. All the songs are good and well constructed.

Every now and then I find that I’m humming a tune and it happens to be Britny Fox. I wasn’t aware that the song “Hair Of the Dog” was a cover version until I bought the Spaghetti Incident by Guns’n’Roses.

My highlights:

  • In Motion
  • Standing in the Shadows
  • Dream On [lovely song]
  • Long Way From Home
  • Shine On
  • Angel In My Heart

On further listening it turns out that there isn’t a bad song on the album!

If it’s a classic LA rock style that you want then this is a great album.

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Old Dog, New Tricks

Reviewing my iPhone music has certainly shown up some weaknesses with my brain. I was aware of the limitations of my memory but this has brought it into sharp perspective.

All the songs and albums I have been listening to for many years have been absorbed completely by my brain. I know what the songs are called, the good bits, the lyrics, the bad bits, the drumming, everything.

All the music I have listened to more recently, even though I have listened to it a lot just hasn’t really sunk in. I know the songs when I hear them but they aren’t “recorded” in my brain.

One of the reasons could be that my memory forming neurons worked better when I was “growing up”.

It could be that I’ve just been listening to the stuff for so long that it just had to sink in to my grey cells.

Another could be that I tend to listen to songs now when I am driving or running and I can’t see my iPhone to see the album cover, song title or lyrics.

Whatever the reason I don’t seem to remember new songs and lyrics although when I listen to them I remember [There’s a PhD in there somewhere].

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Boston – Boston

There’s something about the energy and flair of a first album that normally shocks you awake. I’d only really known “More Than A Feeling” from this album for years because it’s on every bloody rock compilation collection.

However, I started playing Rock Band about 5 years ago and the song “Foreplay, Long Time” was on the game. I found this to be a genius song. It’s brilliant and operatic and full of riffs that make you want to dance. So, it was time to check out the whole album. To be honest I kinda started on a Boston freak time trying to get all their music, which was a bit harder than you might think.

There are eight songs on this album. They are all brilliant. They all deserve special mention but I won’t because of my old age / new song thing. Every one is a classic. I love how easy and great to listen to it is. I also think the songs are pretty predictable but the thing is there that before this band and some others around the same time this sort of song didn’t exist. It’s predictable because this band wrote this stuff in the first place.

Get it, play it. LOUD. In the car.

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Bonfire – AC/DC

There comes a time when all bands sell-out. I think they have to, it maintains their income and produces the goods for the record company. Metallica have done it loads and I find a lot of their stuff nauseating. AC/DC by all measures have done it too. Branded Monopoly and anything else that you want but I don’t see it as selling-out. I see it as giving the fans what they want. For some reason it’s different for AC/DC [there’s cognitive dissonance for you!].

Bonfire is a collection of music from the Bon Scott days of AC/DC [when they were at their best]. The discs are split up into the following:

  • Back In Black [not Bon but it’s there]
  • Atlantic Studios
  • Paris I and II
  • Volts

The Atlantic Studio recording is of them live in the early days. It’s great. Really raw and lovely. The Paris CDs is just the CD version of the video “Let There Be Rock”. Volts is a collection of rare recordings from the early days.

I bought the Let There Be Rock video in about 1989, over an Easter break. I remember watching it. Videos were new to me and this was AC/DC live. At the end after the concert when the screen goes black and “To Bon” is written on the screen I cried. It’s hard not to. The world lost an extreme talent the night he died. On my return to school after the break Steven, who was the other AC/DC nut in my year group, had also watched the video. He had shed a tear too. The soundtrack is lovely. It’s nice to hear slightly different versions of the songs.

Volts is good but it freaks me out hearing classic songs with different lyrics.

If you are a Bon Scott fan then this is grade A merchandise.

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Body Count – Body Count

I’m sorry. Who?
Ice-T?
Singing metal?
What?

That’s right. Ice-T has a band called Body Count and they play metal. Ice-T “sings” his stuff. This is a great album. It makes me laugh and slightly sad at the same time. Ice-T definitely has a message to portray and it seems to be one about the desperation of black people in society and getting laid. It’s funny how these things fit the music but when written down they just don’t scan very well.

My favourites:

  • Body Count’s in the House
  • Body Count
  • KKK Bitch
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The Blues Brothers [Original Soundtrack] – Various

This, first and foremost, is not metal. It’s not even close. However, everyone should have a copy of this and have seen the film at least three times. While I was in the sixth form at school there were a group of people who were very “Blues Brothers”. They loved the film and thought it was really good. They would quote it now and then and I was happy for them. I had never seen it.

While at university I attended a couple of the City and Guilds College Union Engineers’ Balls. Part of the night’s celebrations would be a posh dinner and dance and taxis around London. Then we would return to the student union and spend the rest of the dark hours of night there with music, drinks, food and films. The student cinema would show “The Blues Brothers” [it was a tradition]. So my first experience of this was at some god-awful hour of the night and feeling slightly worse for wear. It is a great film and one that I bought on video to watch in my own time. My latest copy is on DVD to explain and show people that although it is a “musical” it isn’t a “musical”. It’s a great film.

This is a soundtrack to a great non-musical-musical film that has cult status. It’s great.

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