I had this album copied on music cassette at first. I can’t quite remember who I got it from but it was possibly the chap who I had planned to see Def Leppard with in 1988. There were two of us at school who liked the band and I was meant to go and see them play at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Hysteria tour. I didn’t go to that in the end as I secured a place on the Cyprus camp and that seemed more worthwhile.
This is the first album by this band. IT is a monster album musically. I don’t know if it was a numerical success [checks Wikipedia], it did OK for a debut. I reckon it did well ultimately because fans went back and bought the back catalogue. I know that Def Leppard were disappointed at being lumped in with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal which was a mostly London thing. Def Leppard were from [checks Wikipedia, wants to write Sheffield] Sheffield and didn’t really like all that London stuff.
I love this album.
What gets me most is how well all the songs are crafted so well for such a young band. You could swap this and their second album and it would make more sense. In my mid to late teens I found High n Dry a little too-samey and this, the first album, was interesting all the way through. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in that early 80s sound of rolling bass lines and proper sounding guitars.
So, the singer has a classic high voice, but that was a part of its time. The bass is lovely and loud, the guitars work together in harmony and each song has tempo breaks and fits together in a Coca Cola contour-bottle shaped audio-scape [that last metaphor is either amazing or bullshit].
When writing these reviews I tend to have that album on in the background, jogging my memory as I write. The sounds for this album have made me stop and listen a number of times. This is a good thing, I normally don’t pay attention to the music, or at times I don’t have the songs playing as it is an album I know intimately.
Rock Brigade – lovely
Hello America – a little bit bullshitty
Sorrow Is A Woman – great guitars, lovely lyrics, good riff
It Could Be You – look, all these songs are
Satellite – really good, except for the “ooh yeah”s in this one
When The Walls Come Tumbling Down – a post apocalyptic wonder
Wasted – Excellent opening riff, the beat keeps going, excellent
Rocks Off – classic high speed riffage (possibly live but I think the crowd sounds were a post production issue
It Don’t Matter – Lovely
Answer To The Master – to be said with an American accent, also has a classic starty-stop solo section with some awesome bass work [I guess the guitars are good too]
Overture – this is an amazing piece of writing that still shakes me
Look metal fans. Go and buy this. Listen and enjoy. Play it to your family telling them it’s one of the best. They won’t understand.
I bought this album because I really liked the first album by this band. I’ve listened a few times but nothing particularly strikes me about this album. The songs come on now and then and they are fine.
Motörhead are one of those strange bands for me where I listened to the absolute best of them and sought out further music but found it all disappoints slightly. I’m not sure I’ve even listened to this album.
This is a slightly unexpected sight in these pages I guess. what happened is that Ice-T released a heavy metal album called Body Count. It made me wonder if I would like his more “traditional” stuff. So, I bought this CD.
Here’s the shocker – I didn’t mind it. I liked the beats and most of the lyrics. It seemed a good fun album to own.
This album did consort with controversy because the second track was meant to be Princess Diana speaking about being completely on Ice-T’s dick. I mean it sounds like a well spoken British person but if it really was Di that would have been the absolute best.
This album is so very important to me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get across why but I’ll give it a go. The most talented writer I am not.
My earliest memory of rock music is being in the back of the Smith’s car and they decided to play this via a music cassette. I can remember being driven in a Ford Granada along Gilden Way in Harlow and all the members of the Smith family banging their heads up and down. I’m not sure I understood what was going on. I was young, somewhere around ten. This whole event seemed strange. I form of loud guitar music when you move your head.
I’d only been exposed to Abba and Jean Michel Jarre at home. I don’t think there was any rock in the house. There might have been some of The Shadows but nothing particularly heavy. We have to skip a bit after that and it’s worth reading this communication about my descent into metal music. Music back in those days was hard to find, it was exciting to be able to listen to something you had search for, something others hadn’t heard, something that was your own. It’s like finding that one book that really affects you but no-one else has read.
I don’t know when I bought this album. I expect I had a taped copy for a long time. I’m pretty sure I have a CD version somewhere now but, of course, it’s all digital and on a NAS now.
What amazes me about this album is that it is a complete and fully-rounded rock album and it was released in 1974! I probably expect that rock started around 1980, when I became music-conscious, of course every generation likes to think they invented sex (or music).
I have loved this album for over thirty years and I expect I will continue to do so. There isn’t a song that is fast or crazy. Just a complete album of well-crafted songs that make you want to dance, or smash your head on something. I’ve always been amazed at just how beautiful the two lead guitars sound when they solo together.
Not Fragile – the title track starts with a blistering bass line and continues to develop into a crushing riff. I love it. The duelling guitars is amazing.
Rock Is My Life, And This Is My Song – Lovely. A wonderful song.
Roll On Down The Highway – classic rock anthem with a wonderfully crafted solo.
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – arguably the weakest song on this album but annoyingly the most well known.
Free Wheelin’ – An instrumental with some classic stop-start riffs. It’s built upon all the classic forms of rock/blues. It even has a bass solo. Love it.
Sledgehammer – another of my favourites. The opening riff slowly beats out and makes this song a calming beast.
Blue Moanin’ – I do think this is the second weakest song on this album. I mean it’s good but one of them has to be bottom of the list doesn’t it? I’m excluding You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet from the list.
Second Hand – you gotta love a cheeky muted cow-bell in this song. This is a great song.
Givin’ It All Away – an upbeat bluesy riffed beast of a song that would get a pit going (maybe, if we weren’t all so old).
This album isn’t metal. But it’s some of the finest blue-rock you can find. It still holds it own forty five years after release. If I had my way either everyone would know this or no-one. You aren’t good enough for this music.
Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch what I suppose is called a film. There are formalities to get through here before I can launch into the review. The tide on the Medway as I drove to the cinema was quite high. I don’t think it was at its highest but it was definitely waay above half.
The next thing is to talk about my rating I gave the movie on IMDB. I changed my mind as I started writing this communication. There’s a guide to these ratings on in this communication. My first rating was pretty good:
Now, I suppose, there needs to be some explanation about this. This film was pretty shit. It was a mindless action movie. I think my score of a 6 was initially because it was quite well done, you know, it looked good and slick. But this morning I couldn’t face keeping this film ranked above half way.
This film is a testosterone fuelled bullshit story about people with egos so big they aren’t allowed to lose a fight on screen. It was bad, like, Bond bad but without the intelligence.
This is a monster of an album. Buy it. Play it. Love it.
I was meant to see Motörhead play in around 1990 with two friends, Smith and KH. That didn’t happen because of a falling out between me and KH. I didn’t go. I’ve heard the show was really good. Oh well. I had to wait until 2013 to see Motörhead live at Download Festival and they were OK but very much a product of their time. This album though captures them at their very best.
I bought this on tape [music cassette] waaay back. I can remember listening to it while I worked at Cossor Electronics in my “gap year”. I had an AIWA portable cassette player with bass-boost and this album was a great kick in the ears. Gap Year is in quotation marks there because I never intended to go to university but things happen, maybe I’ll write about it here.
I think the thing that this album surprised me the most was the elegance with which Lemmy plays the bass and how his rolling riffs and scales really fit the music. I’m not sure I’d be able to hear this subtlety live but in this album it shouts out.
Ace Of Spades – bloody marvellous.
Stay Clean – another great song.
Metropolis – not a bad song on this album.
The Hammer – it’s metal isn’t it.
Iron Horse – better than when Bon Jovi mentioned it.
No Class – say it with an American accent.
Overkill – Often imitated never bettered.
(We Are) The Roadcrew – Just listen to that scream.
Capricorn – Not a unicorn.
Bomber – I’ve not seen the video but I suspect this is when the lighting rig, shaped as a bomber, flies over the band.
Motörhead – This is the best.
Just before the band play Motörhead Lemmy says “Just In Case”. This phrase echoes through my brain, it’s there as a constant catch phrase, I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve written it on pupils’ leaving books in the past and referenced this album in the hope they listen to it. The bass playing explodes out of the speakers and knocks you flat. It’s an amazing song and the rhythm of the vocals makes me smile. I don’t really know what Lemmy sings, it’s not thing – vocals, I leave those to Smith.
Everyone should own this album, even if it’s to put on at the end of a party to get rid of everyone, or to celebrate a great night. Go and buy it.
On Thursday I went to see Men In Black: International. I wasn’t that fussed about the film, I was more concerned about getting out of the 36C heat outside. Inside my house it was hitting around 30C and that’s plainly ridiculous and fucking scary. These events are going to become more frequent due to anthropogenic global climate change and that saddens me intensely, I hope I’m dead before the water wars start.
There were zero films I was even slightly tempted with at my usual place, Cineworld Rochester, and so this time I went to the far-flung Bluewater shopping centre. The car was not happy about starting in the heat [36C] and so initially I turned it off straight away, it made sounds I have not heard before. I tried again and the thing seemed reasonably comfortable so I decided to risk driving to near Greenhithe. I managed the air conditioning in the car so it stayed at a cool 24C eventually. I don’t like being that warm in a car, it makes me sleepy, a steady 18C is more normal but it was a special day.
I’m afraid I can’t give you any news about the state of the tide as the Bluewater complex is in a quarry and nowhere near the sea. I mean, the river is a couple of miles away but I wasn’t going to make that detour just to keep some strangely traditional part of these reviews going. The tide report will return.
It’s about 1km to the river.
More tradition: the IMDB rating and tweet. As is custom I rated the film on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings in this communication. You can see all my tweets and things by looking at the menu at the top of this page.
So, I rated this film as an 8. That’s quite high really but the film gets two extra points just for the air conditioning available in Bluewater and the theatre. It was glorious to enter the building from the car park and feel the cool air and to feel more human again. I don’t think we were made to sweat constantly. I used the Showcase cinema app on my phone for the electronic ticket on there and it worked well.
The seats in the cinema are lovely and comfortable and I was happy with that but my seat happened to have an EXIT sign nearby and it was too bright. It took my attention too much. So, I snuck into the seat next to mine and was in the shadow of the part-wall and felt much happier. I would not have liked to sit in my original seat for the whole film.
I really enjoyed the film. It looked good and I even chuckled out loud in certain places. The plot was pretty thin, essentially the same as the previous films. But, it was cool in the cinema and the film was fun.
Just one thing though. All the London street scenes seemed to have an EAT restaurant in them. Like there was product placement. The Lexus was obvious but I’m not sure EVERY street in London has an EAT. It might do, I’ve not been that observant every time I go there. Wikipedia says there are 75 EAT locations in London.
Yesterday I took an evening trip to see The Matrix at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I had spent a good portion of the day already aware of the tides as I visited the Redsand Forts and while it was high-ish tide when the trip started it was half tide on the way out when we returned to port. The tide at Rochester was about half again I think when I got to the cinema.
The showing was at 20:00 and I got there about twenty minutes before then. I went for a walk along the wharf. It’s that or buy sweets to eat and so I opted for the healthy option. I’m in a bit of a healthy phase and hoping, once again, to adjust my routines to be more healthy. I’ll probably write stuff here someday about that, I’ll see how it goes first. At the other end of the wharf there was a new development of houses along the river’s edge. They look nice and had lovely balconies and views but I couldn’t help thinking that in less than one hundred years they will either have been destroyed in the Water Wars or flooded by rising ocean levels. I am not optimistic about anthropogenic global climate change.
After seeing a movie at the cinema I rate it on IMDB and I was looking forward to rating this film until I watched it. There will be more about my battle with memory below the embedded tweet. If you read through the movie reviews on this site you will be able to spot the time I learnt how to embed tweets!
Hmmm, WordPress, my website editing software had a update about a month ago and I am learning the new features. I’m not sure if that embedding will work. I’ll wait and see once this page is published. [It worked fine, no need to edit anything]
The scoring of this film as a SEVEN is controversial, I know. Especially if you read my guidance communication on the rating system but I guess I’m trying to break the Matrix [ha fucking ha]. The thing is I was hoping I would love this film. The 27 year old me loved this movie, I bought it on DVD and I’m sure I watched it a few times, I even went to see the sequels and they were fucking terrible films, really terrible. I mean they were really really bad. I went with friends to see them at the Odeon in Maidstone.
Right, here we go.
I wanted this movie to be amazing, I wanted it to blow my mind and when I was 27 it did. Bullet-time was a filming style invented for this movie. The whole look and feel of this film was ground-breaking. It was an amazing action film along with the philosophical grandness of wondering what if we are in a dreamworld or the product of other people’s dreams or in a computer simulation – each of those is equivalent I think.
The things I remembered about this film were:
Trinity being amazing at the beginning
“I know Kung Fu”
The lobby scene
Dodging bullets
The things I had clearly forgotten were how fucking dull some of the philosophical bullshit scenes were. God, there were times in this movie when I just wanted it to finish. I think that’s the problem with nearly every genre now taking lessons from the Matrix and how to make films, the Grandmaster gets killed by those he trains.
Looking at the film now there were lots of things that don’t work in the plot and timing. I will admit though that 1999 was a pretty good time to be alive, just think:
No 9/11
No Iraq war
No Afghan war
No GW Bush
No 7/7
No Brexit
No Trump
To get around the “dying in the Matrix” problem the writers just said that if you die there your mind dies and your body can’t live without a mind. Which is bullshit. They could have just used another excuse, they could have said that you become metally unstable and we kill your body. Similarly getting injured in the Matrix means that you get the same injuries in real life, this is poor writing but I guess you need to have some form of risk involved once you are in the Matrix. I think that just entering a different world would be managed perfectly well by the mind, we do it every night. Unplugging the link into the Matrix shouldn’t kill you either.
The action scenes were pretty good but the Lobby scene seemed much shorter than I remember. I wasn’t that impressed. This is mostly to do with me having watched another twenty years worth of films in an age of computer graphics and near photorealistic graphics. It isn’t really a problem with the Matrix but it just looked slow and I was unimpressed. This is a shame and more a problem with me than the movie.
Fuuuck films with an oracle or wise old woman or man. What a lazy crock of shit those plot devices are. I hate it. Of course, that person needs to be black or they wouldn’t have the same credibility. What I sugest you do is look through all movies with wise old people and see what their current role in society is.
More fuuuck films which use a prophecy. I’ve been reading books recently that have a theme of a prophecy and it’s lazy fucking bullshit. Our species seems to live with the idea that we can predict the future and so some wanker somewhere will have written down what is going to happen. We love the concept of agency and we can’t cope as individuals if we understand that the shit is just random. Nope, we have to have prophecy. We have to have a way of explaining the world and how some people become the heroes or gods. Fuck that shit. It annoys me so much.
“Neo – you are the one”. Fuck you.
How about just Neo being a hacker and then considered someone who can cope with being out of the Matrix. Then he could just develop into an amazing leader. All this destiny bollocks makes me want to cry. It’s a throw back to the days when we didn’t understand how stuff works. It’s a way of giving the human race hope for a future that won’t happen. It’s calming to the global psyche. It’s fucking bullshit that’s what it is.
I hope that now I’ve alerted you to this prophecy shit you will spot it in future and start to downgrade those stories. I do know they are popular. I do know that most of the world relies on that shit but it’s time for reality. All this pophecy shit does is reinforce the idea that some people are born better than others. It keeps the poor poor and the rich/powerful wankers. Our entire societal structure is formed so that only some will be in charge and they will do all they can to stay there. They love this prophecy chosen-one bullshit. Just look at Boris Johnson and tell me he doesn’t believe he should run this country. You see what these stories do to people?
I do note that the Matrix had many scenes without music and I admire that. It was nice to have the stark contrast so that when the action happened the music worked pretty well. I was struck by the idea that people who dress in black and look “alternative” are the dangerous ones. As someone who lives in that world I don’t think it’s right for society to cast those people aside and see them as dangerous but things will change slowly. At least I hope they will, it seems that the world is getting more intolerant recently due to the leading politicians of our time.
I don’t know whether it was the soundtrack or the cinema or where I was sitting in the cinema but some of the scenes’ sound seemed balanced poorly. There were a couple of times I couldn’t hear the speech because of the music and I couldn’t hear the music at the beginning of the Lobby scene. This was a shame because those are important parts in my memory of this film. Along with sound issues fuck the person who seemed to be wrestling with a loud plastic bag during all the quiet bits of the film. Obviously they have no empathy or they would have waited before making that much noise.
Overall this film left me slightly sad that it didn’t meet my memories of it. I saw it as a tired slow film full of philosophical-bull. I understand that it was mind-blowing and ground breaking when it was released but not all groundbreaking films remain amazing, some slowly go away and get remembered for their effects rather than their plot.
On the way out I overheard someone mention they might watch the two sequels. Jesus, that’s beyond the call of duty. I will NOT be seeing them. They were worse than shit.
It’s Ozzy isn’t it! You don’t need much more than that. This freaky person who once bit the head of a live bat during a concert. This man who took copious quantities of drugs and who invented Heavy Metal. This man who still writes great music. This god of metal.
And then you see him on a reality TV show and it shocks you just how fucked he is. His body is knackered and you can actually see him thinking. The show highlighted just how much his wife had managed him and got him clean, eventually.
Whoever your heroes are they will let you down eventually. This downfall will be quicker if you see or meet them in real life. Never meet your heroes. I used to think Ozzy was a god, now he’s a broken man.
I’m pretty sure this was the first Ozzy album I bought. There are a couple of others but I think I got this one on music cassette. It’s a brilliant album. It’s very well produced and has excellent songs on it. I’ve loved the rolling bass lines keeping the rhythm section going and the creepy sound clips over the top. There’s a certain beat to these songs that is a slow but heavy boom that means you can feel the urge to move and bounce along.
Mr Tinkertrain – excellent. Mama, I’m Coming Home – tear jerker. No More Tears – brilliant opening, the riffing is ace. Hellraiser – damn good. Zombie Stomp – written with the audience in mind. A.V.H. – darn good.
I’ve enjoyed this album for many years and it still pleases me, which is no mean feat.
