arabchanter wrote:

Great post Pat, lots of good nuggets I didn't know, on the point about them being ''fenians'' that's the first time I've heard of that, I can't recall any bands being talked about in that sense, speaking for myself the sectarian thing wasn't really big in Dundee, when I was at primary there was the St Patricks day scuffles between Catholic schools and Protestant schools, where you were asked if you were "Scots or Irish" and depending on who was asking and what your answer was concluded in getting a shake of the hand or chased/beat up, but that died away and things came a bit more territorial between schemes, and religion was never questioned.

Plenty music acts have been and are labelled as papist around here, I’d imagine it’s worse in the west and down to Ayrshire.

Let’s see, U2, The Cranberries, Undertones, Boomtown Rats and even SLF (!) have been marked down as IRA sympathisers, sometimes simply because of their names. Simple Minds as well. And of course, Paul McCartney for Give Ireland back to the Irish.

I’m pleased that sectarianism doesn’t blight Dundee to any great extent, for there is often an unpleasant undercurrent running through folks’ lives in other parts of Scotland.

Even this week, the lead letter in the Falkirk Herald is in praise of the Orange Lodge and their involvement in Remembrance Sunday. Hugely disappoints me to live in such an environment where bigotry is normalised.
 
To the recent albums: it’s been a surprise to me how many of these I like, or at least enjoy some of the stuff by the artists. At the time, at the start of the ‘eighties, I can mostly remember listening to music from the ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, with a few recent favourites like The Ramones, Devo or the Damned flung in. But there was Adam and the Ants, and Dexys, plenty more too.
 
My memory is a bit derelict, it seems.   

 

DAY 456.
AC/DC...................................Back In Black   (1980)












I could probably repeat my ramblings of the last AC/DC album "Highway To Hell" verbatim, as this hit me in exactly the same way, no' a great lover of the guitary stuff, but have to admit I enjoyed this offering, I also liked the vocals, I actually bought the single "All Because Of You"by Geordie back in (fuck me I've just checked) 1973.

  Now Brian Johnston has got a voice I'd pay good money to listen to, and unlike a lot of singers he seems to sound exactly the same on stage as he does in the studio, having never seen him live I tend to rely on you tube videos, but I recall that didn't work out to well for our beloved football team, so if anyone can vouch for Mr Johnston's distinctive chanting live I would love to hear from you.


Anyways back to the album, a nice start, kicking off with "Hells Bells" the bells chiming then Angus starts playing the ever so familiar riff and it just builds and builds from there,excellent.The title track is another favourite, no bells this time but there is that "I can't get that cuntin' riff out of my head" riff, Jesus, that worm digs deep into your lugs, a great tune dedicated to Bon Scott. but the creme-de-la-creme on the album for me at least is the anthemic "Shook Me All Night Long" and if the video below doesn't make you put a live AC/DC concert on your bucket list then I think you've probably settled down and gave up on life. If I do get the chance to see them live I hope the gash is as nice as thon Argentinian birds that were on show, although no' gonna hold my breath.



Although this is a good album, It wont be going into my collection just yet, as I've got a greatest hits CD and these vinyls are getting a bit costly for originals, I lost out on The Slits vinyl the other day, it ended up going for £45 which is unfortunately a bit too much for me at the moment, especially when there are other albums I want as well.

So this album wont be going into my collection, for now!















Bits & Bobs'



Have written earlier about AC/DC in post #1626 (if interested?)


The Story Behind The Album: AC/DC's Back In Black
On July 25, 1980, AC/DC released their first album since the death of Bon Scott. It became one of the biggest selling albums ever.

It was towards the end of February, 1980. Brian Johnson was staying in the spare room of his mum’s house in Newcastle when he heard the news. “I remember picking up the Daily Express and seeing this report that Bon was dead and I was amazed that it was such a tiny little report,” says Johnson, rolling his eyes. “And the press treated it with such contempt, you know, that tone of ‘What did you expect?’” He shakes his head. “It was just fucking awful...”

 Malcolm Young, meanwhile, was in London, jamming new ideas for the band’s next album.


 “Me and Angus had already written some stuff on the road, but we’d settled in at this place called E-Zee Hire and we were banging a few things out, demo ideas mainly.

 “Bon, in fact, had popped down,” he adds, while seated on the sofa of his room at the Mandarin Oriental in Munich. “He was staying in London, too. In reality, we’d actually gone six years without a break by that point, you know, on the road and then straight into the studio - you just did it.


 “Bon was a little bit older than us, he probably had a few sore bones, I’m looking back on it of course, that’s just my impression. But we were down at the rehearsal room and he came down to see us and said he was just about ready to go for it, you know. He was starting to recharge his batteries. He was looking really good. So, you know, a couple of days later it was bang! It was a total shock and, obviously, it just took over everything, the whole situation.”


 Johnson pulls heavily on his roll up. Johnson, in fact, is always pulling heavily on a roll up. “Then I saw the Melody Maker and it was plastered all over it, as you can imagine, and it was odd because I’d only just got to know the band. A friend of mine had got me into them, and I’d just seen them doing Rock Goes To College on the BBC a few months before. The club band I was playing in at the time was doing Whole Lotta Rosie, too. But I hadn’t even twigged by then that I’d met Bon in Hull years before when he’d supported us.”


 In 1973, Scott’s then band, Fraternity, had supported Johnson’s then band, Geordie, on their European tour. According to legend, Bon would later impress upon AC/DC how good a frontman Johnson was.

 “It was such a weird thing and it actually affected me more than I thought it would, you know, emotionally,” he adds. “And it changed my life, obviously.”


 “We went back over to Australia for the funeral and we came back and we were just sitting around,” says Malcolm. “I think our then manager [Peter Mensch, whose Q Prime organisation would go on to manage Def Leppard, Metallica, Queensrÿche and a host of others in the 80s] even approached us on the plane on the flight back saying he had some singers’ names for us to look at.” A list which allegedly included The Easybeats’ Stevie Wright, Australian Alan Fryer (who was in a band called Heaven) and ex-Heavy Metal Kids singer Gary Holton). But “I just couldn’t be bothered,” admits Malcolm. “I remember waving them away and just thinking it’s not fucking right, you know? So we waited a while and he kept pounding away, but we didn’t really have any interest in the names coming forward.”


 He lets out a sigh. “We were back in London, and me and Angus were just sitting around doing virtually nothing, I wasn’t even playing my guitar. And, eventually, we said ‘Let’s just get together for the sake of ourselves, it doesn’t matter but at least we can play our guitars together and try to get through it’. And there was no pressure on to do anything, to be honest. We were just doing it to do something. And that’s how we slowly got back into it.”
 Which is how the story started. After the escalating commercial success of Highway To Hell (their first million-selling album) and the sudden, juddering impact of Bon’s death, the band, with the blessing of Bon’s mother Ida, set about rebuilding. Legendary producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange (who would go on to work with Def Leppard, The Cars, and future wife Shania Twain, to name just a few) was already on board after the commercial and critical success of Highway… Surprisingly, however, Lange hadn’t been first choice to produce that album. The band’s label had been pressuring them to work with an outside producer after a string of albums produced by older brother (and former Easybeat) George Young and his production partner Harry Vanda.


 “We ended up going in to work with this guy called Eddie Kramer, who’d worked with Hendrix,” Malcolm recalls. “I remember he looked at Bon and said to us, ‘Can your guy sing?’. He was a bit of a prat, to be honest with you. He might have sat behind the knobs for Hendrix, but he’s certainly not Hendrix, I can tell you that much. And then, luckily, our management found ‘Mutt’.”


 The band set about album rehearsals in London with Johnson in place - much to his surprise and delight. “I was down there the night before they told us,” the singer recalls. “Angus had this guy called Plug, and I said to him, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’, and he just said, ‘Stay the night and you’ll know in the morning’.


 “The next morning they told us, and I’ll always remember coming back down to London for those two weeks of rehearsals and all these people were popping in and out to take a look at us. I was sitting there and I looked up and Ozzy Osbourne was standing there having a look, like. I can appreciate it, they all loved Bon. But I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh Brian, what the fuck have you got yourself into?’. I wasn’t scared though, I was excited, I looked at it like, ‘Well, if I do get fired at least I can tell me mates I was in AC/DC for a couple of weeks and I’d had a nice holiday in London’.”


 The band flew out to Compass Point Studios in Nassau less than two weeks later. Landing during a lull in a storm that continued to rage across the island for the next three days. For Johnson, from Newcastle to Nassau wasn’t the journey to paradise he might have first envisioned.


 “It was hardly any kind of studio, we were in these little concrete cells, comfy mind, you had a bed and a chair. And this big old black lady ran the whole place. Oh, she was fearsome, she ruled that place with a rod of iron. We had to lock the doors at night because she’d warned us about these Haitians who’d come down at night and rob the place. So she bought us all these six-foot fishing spears to keep at the fucking door! It was a bit of a stretch from Newcastle, I can tell you.
  “I remember arriving at night and the customs took the guitars off Mal and Angus and they were like, ‘We’re here to work, we need them’. But they just didn’t like the look of us, and I suddenly realised what it’s like to be in a serious rock band; the shit you have to deal with. And of course, the Bahamas I’d seen in the photographs was all white beaches and when we got there it was pissing it down, there was flooding and all the electricity went out, nay TV.

  “We just ended up sitting there for three days until the weather broke and the guitars were cleared. Plug and Keith were down there every day trying to get them back, and eventually I think it was a case of a bit of bribery and then magically we got the guitars back.”


 While much of the music and melodies had been written on the road and in rehearsals in London, most of the album’s lyrics would be written in the first instance by Brian and then edited and added to accordingly by the Young brothers, while the band were in Compass Point. Malcolm and Angus (and even George Young) had come up with all the song titles, and had then left it up to Johnson to fill in the gaps.

 “He was the new guy and we wanted to make him feel that he was a part of the band,” says Malcolm. “He got straight to it, there was a lot of pressure on him, we had a tight deadline and a producer in ‘Mutt’ who really tried to make an impact with the vocals, so all eyes were on Brian.  “I remember going down there and there were all these storms. Back In Black was our first time there. It was the best place to do that album because there was nothing going on. We’d sit through the night with a couple of bottles of rum with coconut milk in and work. That’s where a lot of the lyric ideas came from.”
  The first song the band would record for the album would turn out to be their biggest international hit, You Shook Me All Night Long.
  “I remember sitting in my room writing that and I had this blank sheet of paper and this title and I was thinking, ‘Oh, what have I started?’.” says Brian, wrinkling his forehead. “And I’ll tell you something and I’m not scared of being called a sissy and I don’t believe in spirits and that, but something happened to me that night in that room. Something passed through us, and I felt great about it.
  “I don’t give a fuck if people believe me or not, but something washed through me and went, it’s alright son, it’s alright. This kind of calm. I’d like to think it was Bon, but I can’t because I’m too cynical and I don’t want people getting carried away. But something happened and I just started writing the song.

  “Then when we went in to record it, that was when I realised that Malcolm is pretty much the captain of the AC/DC ship. ‘Mutt’ had said, ‘Brian, it’s got too many words in it’. And Mal kind of looked at him sideways and went, ‘What? Too many words?’. And ‘Mutt’ went, ‘Could you do it this way for me?’. And so he’s got me singing it like, ‘She was a fast machine’ [significant pause, clicks his fingers in an almost demure swing beat] ‘she kept her motor clean’ [ditto] ‘she had the side to side’ [once more] ‘telling me no lies…’”

  At this point he’s doubled up with laughter. He straightens himself up and does his best to look grim. “Then Mal came in and heard it and went kinda ballistic. He was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? You’ve taken out the rock and roll!’. And I remember we took it up to the house that night, and we had this little music box and we put it on. I was thinking ‘That’s fucking good’ - and that was even before the lead had been put on.”
  Lange, of course, would also produce the follow-up album, For Those About To Rock (We Salute You), which would present the band with another commercial smash (though not quite on the scale of Back In Black), but it would be his last with the band.

  “It was actually time to call it a day really and ‘Mutt’ was a big part of that,” says Malcolm. “Highway… was always his favourite album even though Back… was the big seller, and we’d done that album in about six weeks all told. But things had moved on when we came to do Back… The recording process was changing, and Mutt was right at the forefront of that.


 “The whole thing was getting longer and longer and For Those About To Rock… had been such a hassle, moving from studio to studio, we’d been all over the fucking shop.” Lange eventually hired a recording mobile from England to record in Paris. “By the time we got to play the songs all the freshness had gone and it’s hard enough in the studio for us as it is, we’re a band that ultimately wants to be on stage…”


 “Aye, he’s very meticulous.” agrees Brian, rolling papers paused at his lips. “I think that’s part of the reason that Mal and Angus wanted to get away from him. Admittedly, as a singer, it’s great to hear the results he gets out of you, but fucking hell,” he groans.

 “It was like, ‘Again, Brian, again - hold on, you sang that note too long so there’s no room for a breath’. He wouldn’t let anything go past him. He had this thing where he didn’t want people to listen to the album down the road and say there’s no way someone could sing that, they’ve dropped that in, even the breaths had to be in the right place. And you cannot knock a man for that, but he drove me nuts. I’d be sitting there going, ‘Arrggghh!’.

  “It’s weird but my fond memories of that album are when ‘Mutt’ went, ‘Right, you’re done, off you go, thank you’. And I’d been working every day and I was little bit suspicious by then and I was going, ‘Can’t be, there must be something else’. And I walked out of there and it was about three in the afternoon, and it was a beautiful sunny day and I went down to where the huts were and I sat on this seawall and I got a ciggie out and sat there among the trees, and I was so happy that I’d done it. But I hadn’t really heard one song, I’d go in do a couple of verses, pop back and do a chorus. That’s the way ‘Mutt’ keeps you interested, you know.

  “I got back to Newcastle and it was with great trepidation that I opened up the album when they finally sent me a copy,” recalls Johnson. “I put it on and I was going, ‘Jesus Christ, I hope I’m not shit’; I couldn’t even hear the songs I was so nervous. And everyone in Newcastle - actually, everyone in the world - knew it was coming out.”

  Although all of the band would later admit to frustrations with working with the meticulous producer, none disputed that his role was pivotal. Johnson is especially grateful for his work on Hells Bells.

  “I could not find a start for that song, how do you start a song called Hells Bells? You know, what do you write about? Anyway, ‘Mutt’ knew I was sitting on me tod and the weather was shite and there was this huge clap of thunder across the sky, and Mutt came in and went, ‘I’ve got an idea for you, Brian, rolling thunder, pouring rain…’, and I went ‘Fucking hell!’ He mimics jotting the lines down on a pad. “And then it was ‘Coming on like a hurricane,’ because one was actually coming on. And he just went, ‘Yeah, there you go,’ and he disappeared. I was just sitting there under this little light I had and he’d just come in and done that and I was like, fuck me, the opening lyric, there it is…”


 “That title was one of the ones we’d dedicated to Bon, in light of the Highway To Hell album, you know?” says Malcolm. “That and Back In Black was our sort of tribute. The oldest title on there was one that George had come up with when we were working on Powerage - What Do You Do For Money Honey, which we all chipped in on.”


 Emotional adversity, power cuts and Haitians who had to be fended off with fishing spears aside, when the band talk 20 years on about the making of Back In Black, it’s with warmth and a certain fondness. Though memories might have been padded by a multi-million selling album that made them one of the biggest bands in the world, Johnson’s only real complaint concern the high notes on Shake A Leg (“Oh, that was fucking way up, some of those notes will never be heard by man again”.) While Malcolm manages a shudder when you draw his attention to Lange’s brief reworking of You Shook Me…, he says that the original version, along with Shoot To Thrill, was the easiest to put down in the studio. For Johnson it was Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.

  “I didn’t know what to do at the start so you can hear me there having a fag at the beginning. Mal just said to go with it so I put my headphones on, put a tab in my mouth and just took a breath.”

  He starts to repeat the lyrics loudly, head tilted slightly back: “‘All you middle men throw away your fancy cars…’. For some reason middle men were in the news at the time, the top guys weren’t getting the blame and the workforce weren’t getting it either, it was the middle men who were this grey area. I must have picked up on it and it just went from there.”


 One of the many rumours which still surround the making of Back In Black are that some of the lyrics had actually been penned by Bon Scott prior to his death.


 The title of Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution was a line, according to an ex-girlfriend, that Bon had used in an argument with his landlord. A suggestion Malcolm Young is swift to refute.
  “Nah, that was one that Angus came up with,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We were in London at the time and there were all those problems with the old Marquee Club because it was in a built-up area and there was this whole thing about noise pollution in the news, the environmental health thing that you couldn’t have your stereo up loud after 11 at night, it all came from that.”

  But what about the more serious charge that Bon was never credited for the lyrics he allegedly wrote? That he rehearsed the album with the band and that (and this one’s out there with JFK conspiracy theorists everywhere) there is an earlier, rough demo copy of Back In Black hidden away somewhere that features Bon on vocals.

  “Bollocks,” says Johnson simply when I put it to him. “That’s a load of bollocks. Someone said to me the other day that Bon’s bigger in death than he was in life, which I don’t agree with. But legends do grow like years on the age of your birthday and those stories are great to tell to younger lads at the bar. Once I thought that the web would help clear all this shit up, but it’s just added to it. I can tell you that Bon hadn’t even gone into the studio to even rehearse with the lads, he was getting ready to work on the lyrics when he died.”

  Malcolm Young is equally adamant.

 “That is complete bollocks, I wish we had rehearsed the album with Bon,” he says. “Think about it, if we had an album with Bon on it then that would have gone out, obviously. It’d be a total fucking disaster to sit on that, know what I mean? It’s complete rubbish.
 “Again, I wish he had written some of the lyrics. You can’t compete with Bon’s lyrics, he was born with this real talent for that. I remember the critics at the time having a go that the lyrics weren’t as good as Bon’s…”


 Former tour manager Ian Jeffrey has also claimed that he still has a folder of Scott’s lyrics for 15 songs that were written for Back In Black, though he’s yet to produce anything to back the claim up.
  “The only thing he ever gave me was a note with some scribblings of Bon’s and that was within a few days of his death,” says Malcolm. “It was something quite personal, and he didn’t want to hand it to Bon’s parents at the time. There were a couple of little lyrics on there but there was nothing with a title or that would give you any idea of where his head was at the time.
  “But I kept that and I often wonder if I should send them back to Bon’s mum…” He trails off momentarily. “There wasn’t even enough to build up into something that would stand up to Bon’s reputation.” In 1994, Australian journalist Clinton Walker published his biography – Highway To Hell: The Life And Times Of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott. A revelatory read that painted Malcolm and Angus as manipulative ogres, it enshrined Bon’s memory and rumoured in its epilogue that Brian Johnson had been fired from the band and then later reinstated. But while Walker had interviewed Bon’s friends and family, crucially he never spoke to Malcolm or Angus.
  “I can tell you why we never had any time for him,” explains Malcolm. “A few years after Bon died he approached us – I remember that film La Bamba [the Ritchie Valens biopic] was big at the time – and they wanted to make a film like that about Bon. They didn’t even have a script and we were like, ‘Fuck this’. We couldn’t stop him using our songs through publishing, but we certainly weren’t going to help them put it out.
  “So he goes off to a publisher and gets this advance on the premise that there’s this whole thing about a cover-up over Bon’s death, and he goes up with something to make his book happen I guess, and that’s what he came up with.”
  There is still one more story about Back In Black to tell you about and, remarkably, this time it’s a true one.

  “When the title track, Back In Black, was finished, mixed and everyone knew what was going on with that track, ‘Mutt’ could never see the point to it,” says Johnson. “He said, ‘I don’t get it, anything about it, the music, the lyrics, I just don’t see it at all, if only I could even get to like it’,” says Malcolm, still obviously amused by the memory.
  “I don’t think he could figure it out because it was new, that kind of soul meets rock’n’roll thing. The phrasing on it came from jazz, from scat singing. But at that time Mutt just couldn’t see it at all, where we were coming from.”

  Around 50 million sales later, presumably he no longer has that difficulty…




Back In Black was the eighth AC/DC album and was recorded over six weeks at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas during April and May 1980.
  
The band played their first gig with Brian Johnson on July 1, 1980, in Namur, Belgium.


  
 The album was originally released in America on July 25, 1980; in Britain and Europe on July 31; and finally in Australia on August 11.

  
During the album’s course, AC/DC shot a total of six promotional videos: Back In Black, Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution, Hell’s Bells, You Shook Me All Night Long, Let Me Put Love Into You and Shoot To Thrill.
  
But only four singles were released from it: You Shook Me All Night Long, Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution, Hells Bells and Back In Black.

  
The remastered version of the album has whitened in the AC/DC logo on the cover; the original has their name in outline only.

  
The album has now sold over 50 million copies worldwide.

   On release it topped the UK charts for two weeks, reached No.4 in America and stayed in the Top 10 for over five months. It went to No.2 in Australia.

   It did so well in America that Atlantic, their US record company, finally released their Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album (which they’d originally passed on), which then proceeded to top Back In Black by reaching No.3, in May 1981.
  
Angus Young on the riff to the album’s title track: “Malcolm had that riff for about three weeks. He came in one night and said, ‘You got your cassette here? Can I put this down? It’s been driving me mad. I won’t be getting any sleep until I put it on cassette.’ He sat down and played it all. The funniest thing is he said to me, ‘What do you think? I don’t know if it’s crap or not.’”
 

 The success of the album was cemented when the band were asked to headline the second Castle Donington Monsters Of Rock Festival in August 1981. (They would headline it twice more, in 84 and 91)

  
The album has a phenomenal legacy. In 1999 they were asked by MTV to perform with Eminem at their prestigious annual Awards Ceremony as he rapped My Name Is over the Back In Black riff. The band declined because, as Malcolm put it, “That shows you how out of touch some people are.” There is, however, a version of the song incorporating the riff available via the net.
  
The band was also approached by the Beastie Boys about using a sample of Back In Black for one of their songs. Malcolm again: “We thought about that, he had all the right reasons, but we’ve got a general rule and we said no. Why don’t they just write their own samples?”
  
To this day, AC/DC have never topped the album commercially (or, according to their staunchest critics, creatively). Surprisingly perhaps, Brian Johnson agrees, saying: “I think everybody gets one album and if you do then you’re fucking lucky, it was just the right circumstances, everything was perfect for something to happen and it happened.”

 Malcolm Young: “With Bon’s death we wanted to put everything down right, we were really focused on that album and it turned out to be timeless and I think it’ll stay that way. I think maybe AC/DC had come to a peak at that point.”




"Hells Bells"



 
AC/DC recorded this a few months after lead singer Bon Scott died of acute alcohol poisoning after a night of heavy drinking. The album is a tribute to him, and features his replacement, Brian Johnson, on vocals.


 
This is the first track on Back In Black, AC/DC's biggest album. In tribute to Bon Scott, it starts off with the bell tolling four times before the guitar riff comes in. The bell rings another nine times, gradually fading out. When played live, Brian Johnson would strike the bell.


 
You don't honour Bon Scott's memory with a bell from a sound effects reel, so the band needed a real bell, and a big one. The first attempt to record the bell took place in Leicestershire, England at the Carillon and War Memorial Museum. This proved insufficient, so the band commissioned a one-ton bronze bell from a local foundry that they would also use on stage.



The bell wasn't ready in time for recording, however, so the manufacturer (John Taylor Bellfounders) arranged for them to record a similar bell at a nearby church. According to engineer Tony Platt, that didn't go well, as there were birds living in the bell, so when they rang it they also got the fluttering of wings (the birds would retreat back inside the bell after the toll).



They decided to use the bell that was in production, so they borrowed a mobile recording unit owned by Ronnie Laine and wheeled it into the foundry. The bell was hung on a block and tackle and struck by the man who built it.



Because of the harmonics, bells are not easy to record, so Platt placed about 15 microphones with various dynamics in different locations around the foundry to record the sounds. Once it was on tape, Platt brought the recordings to Electric Lady Studios in New York, where he and producer Mutt Lange chose the right combination of bell sounds, put a mix together, and slowed it down to half speed so the one-ton bell would sound like a more ominous two-ton bell. This was integrated into the mix, and the song was completed. Listeners with very sharp ears will notice that the bell when chimed live is an octave higher than than it is on the recording.


 
This was one of the first songs regularly played as entrance music for a Major League Baseball relief pitcher. In the '90s, the bells signaled the entrance of San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman. This bit of home team intimidation was copied throughout the league, most famously by the New York Yankees, who appropriated Metallica's "Enter Sandman" as Mariano Rivera's entrance music.



The concept of relief pitcher entrance music was introduced in the 1989 movie Major League, where Charlie Sheen's character comes in to "Wild Thing" by The Troggs. A few years later, The Philadelphia Phillies played that song when their pitcher Mitch Williams would come in from the bullpen.


   
The term "Hell's Bells" is an exclamation of surprise, although in the context of this song, it is used to conjure up images of the underworld and the feeling of raising hell - something Bon Scott was known for.


 
The album was produced by John "Mutt" Lange, who also helmed the previous AC/DC album, Highway to Hell. Lange went on quite a run after Back In Black, producing the Foreigner album 4 (1981) and the Def Leppard albums High 'N' Dry (1981) and Pyromania (1983).


  
AC/DC recorded most of Back In Black in the Bahamas at Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios (they took the studio time on short notice when another act gave it up). Brian Johnson explained to Q magazine November 2008 that penning the lyrics to this song was a supernatural and scary experience. The singer explained: "I don't believe in God or Heaven or Hell. But something happened. We had these little rooms like cells with a bed and a toilet, no TVs. I had this big sheet of paper and I had to write some words. I was going, 'oh f--k.' and I'll never forget, I just went (scribbles frantically as if his hand is possessed). I started writing and never stopped. And that was it, hells Bells. I had a bottle of whisky and I went (generous gulps). I kept the light on all night, man."


 
Johnson told Q magazine how this song played a part in rescuing imprisoned Black Hawk Down pilot Michael Durant following the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993. He recalled: "That was the best one. He was shoved in prison, his back was broken. They were kicking him, shooting bullets into him and he was terrified. His pals knew that AC/DC was his favorite band so they hooked up a speaker to the skid of one of the Black Hawks and they were playing 'Hells Bells' over the rooftops. He took his shirt off and- cos his legs were broken- he crawled up to the windows and waved his shirt. That's how they got him out. Ain't that amazing!"




 As soon as the first lyric is heard, it is unmistakable that the band could not have found a better replacement than Brian Johnson. Johnson puts a manic rage into every syllable and an unearthly howl on the chorus, making a song with scarily sacrilegious lyrics even scarier. By the way, that hat he wears onstage was his brother's idea, to help Brian Johnson keep the sweat out of his eyes. His brother loaned it to him and never got it back.





"Back In Black"


This was released five months after lead singer Bon Scott died. The song is a tribute to Scott, and the lyrics, "Forget the hearse 'cause I never die" imply that he will live on forever through his music. With Brian Johnson on lead vocals, the Back In Black album proved that AC/DC could indeed carry on without Scott.


 
Brian Johnson made quite a statement with this song, quickly endearing himself to AC/DC fans and leaving little doubt that the band made the right pick to replace Bon Scott. Johnson had been in a group called Geordie, which Scott saw in 1973. After that show, Scott talked up the Geordie lead singer to his bandmates, and in 1980 when they were looking for a replacement, AC/DC's producer Mutt Lange suggested him. At the time, Johnson was working as a windshield fitter and had recently reunited Geordie.


 
The band got the idea for the title before writing any of the song, although Malcolm Young had the main guitar riff for years and used to play it frequently as a warm-up tune. After Bon Scott's death, Angus Young decided that their first album without him should be called Back In Black in tribute, and they wrote this song around that phrase.


 
The album had a black cover with the band's logo on it, which was a tribute to Bon Scott. They didn't want it to feel mournful, however, and needed a title track that captured the essence of their fallen friend. They were certainly not going to do a ballad, so it fell on Brian Johnson to write a lyric that would rock, but also celebrate Scott without being morbid or literal.



Johnson says he wrote "Whatever came into my head," which at the time he thought was nonsense. To the contrary, lines about abusing his nine lives and beating the rap summed up Scott perfectly, and his new bandmates loved it.


 
Bon Scott had several lyrical ideas for the album, but those were abandoned by the band in favor of new lyrics by Brian, Malcolm and Angus. Former AC/DC manager Ian Jeffrey claims to still have a folder that contains lyrics of 15 songs written for Back In Black by Bon, but Angus insists that all of Bon's notebooks were given to his family. 


This song was recorded in The Bahamas and produced in New York by Mutt Lange. Back In Black was one of the first big albums Lange produced. He went on to work with Def Leppard, Celine Dion, and Shania Twain (who he married in 1993). In the late-'70s, he produced two albums for the band Clover, which featured Huey Lewis on harmonica and Alex Call on lead vocals. Call explains Lange's production style:


"Mutt is a real studio rat. He is Mr. Endurance in the studio. When we were making the records with him, he'd start working at 10:30, 11 in the morning and go until 3 at night, night after night. He is one of the guys that really developed that whole multi-multi-multi track recording. We'd do 8 tracks of background vocals going, "Oooooh" and bounce those down to one track and then do another 8, he was doing a lot of that. A lot of the things you hear on Def Leppard and that kind of stuff, he was developing that when he worked with us. We were the last record he did that wasn't enormous, and that's not his fault, he did a really good job with us. Mutt is famous for working long hours. The story I heard about one of the Shania sessions, he had Rob Hajakos, who's one of the famous fiddle session men down here (Nashville). Rob was playing violin parts for like seven or eight hours and finally he said, 'Can I take a break,' and Mutt says, 'What do you mean take a break?' Rob goes, 'Have you ever held one of these for eight hours under your chin?' Mutt really loves to record, he loves music and he's a real perfectionist and an innovator. An unbelievable commercial hook writer."


 
This was the title track to AC/DC's most popular album. It has sold over 19 million copies in the US, the 6th highest ever. Worldwide, it has sold over 40 million.


 
The Beastie Boys sampled this on their 1985 single "Rock Hard," a single released in 1985 on Def Jam Records. They sampled it without AC/DC's permission, so AC/DC refused to allow the Beastie Boys to include the song on their 1999 compilation album Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science.


 
A remastered version is included on the 1997 Bon Scott tribute album, Bonfire.


   This was used as the backing track to a bootleg version of Eminem's 1999 hit "My Name Is" The song fits surprisingly well under Eminem's rap.


 
Missy Elliott did a remix of this song called "Get Your Freak On (AC/DC remix)" that is played in the beginning of the movie The Rundown, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Sean William Scott.


  Kurt Cobain was given his first guitar for his 14th birthday, and this was the first song that he learned to play.





"You Shook Me All Night Long"


This was the first AC/DC single featuring new lead singer Brian Johnson. He replaced Bon Scott, who died February 19, 1980 after a drinking binge. Scott's father made it clear to the band that they should find a new singer and keep going.


 
Brian Johnson came up with the line "She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean" when he realized that cars and women were very much alike - they go fast, let you down, but then make you happy again when you see the new model. AC/DC has never been known for deep, meaningful lyrics.


 
Brian Johnson said that the inspiration for this song came from seeing images of American girls while recording in the Bahamas for the album Back In Black.


 
Angus and Malcolm Young have received lots of praise for their guitar work on this track. The song has made many lists of top guitar solos in rock.


 
Brian Johnson told UK's Absolute Radio about the inspiration behind the song. "The boys had a title," he recalled. "Malcolm and Angus [Young] said, 'Listen, we've got this song. It's called 'Shook Me All Night Long.' That's what we want the song to be called.' And if you listen to the chords, [the chorus] just fell into place so I can't claim any credit on that thing."


"It was as quick as it had to be, which was that night. I guess I had to try and impress somebody," he continued. "It was just a thing that came at the time, and I still think it's one of the greatest rock and roll riffs I've ever heard in my life."
  
Some copies of the single were pressed incorrectly - they play a song called "Shake A Leg" and are considered collector's items.


 
MTV wasn't on the air when this song was released, but in Australia and England, there were some TV shows that would show videos, so bands popular in those countries would sometimes make them. AC/DC made one for this song, which was directed by David Mallet, who also did some of Blondie's videos. He based the video on the comic strip character Andy Capp, which was very popular in England. Brian Johnson took on the drunkard persona of the character, and we see him come home to a room of scantily clad women, one of which is riding a mechanical bull. Mallet also directed their video for "Thunderstruck."


 
The album has sold over 40 million copies worldwide.


 
AC/DC played this when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, who inducted them, sang on it with them.


 
This is a very popular song at strip clubs (or so we're told...). The lyrics and groove go very well with pole dancing.
 

Shania Twain sang this on her Up! Close And Personal TV special (also released as a DVD). Her then-husband, Mutt Lange, produced Back In Black.


  
Johnson told USA Weekend that this song is for him the highlight of the band's catalog because: "It was the first song I wrote with the guys, and it has a special groovy beat that won't let you go. It has such a special place in my heart, and I still love to sing it onstage. To me, it might be one of the best rock songs ever written - if I do say so myself."


 
One of the more unusual covers of this song can be found on the 2001 album, A Hillbilly Tribute To AC/DC, by the AC/DC bluegrass tribute band Hayseed Dixie.
 



 

DAY 457.
The Cramps............................Songs The Lord Taught Us   (1980)












This is another album where I've heard of the band but never actually heard them before, this was a decent album, nothing to piss me off, but then I watched some videos and the boy "Lux Interior" the lead singer seems to like strutting about the stage in woman's knickers or at best "budgie smugglers" and high heels. Now I normally would like to see any band that I consider knocks out some good sounds, but watching him jump aboot in his old womans see-through panties and high heels would gie me the "dreh boak," such performances are surely indoor pursuits played out in the privacy of your own home



The music seemed to be a cross over of rock "n" roll,soft punk and rockabilly, and reminded me in places of Devo and the B52s with the vocals and almost novelty lyrics mixed in with a bit of Stray Cats, this wasn't a bad listen, certainly a better listen than watch, but in saying that his old woman (Poison Ivy) was a lot kinder on my eyes.

 
I liked the opening track "TV Set," "Zombie Dance," but the pick of the tracks for me was "Garbageman," there was a couple of covers on the album, the "Little Willie John" classic "Fever" and the "Sonics"  superb "Strychnine" both far better than The Cramps versions, in my humbles.


I may download a few tracks off this album, but don't find it good enough to buy, this album wont be getting added to my collection.





Bits & Bobs:


Songs The Lord Taught Us, now celebrating its 35th anniversary, was preceded by the Gravest Hits EP the previous year. Comprised of their first two self-released singles, 'Surfin' Bird' and 'Human Fly', plus a cover of Ricky Nelson's 'Lonesome Town', the EP's tracks were recorded and produced by former Box Tops and Big Star frontman Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis. For the debut album, the band returned to Memphis and plugged directly into the source, recording at Sam Phillips' Sun Studio with more reverb, more trash and more, well, more Cramps.


 Songs The Lord Taught Us continues to work because of its sincerity. The humour, though often infantile, is played straight and revels in a world of its own making. Take 'I Was A Teenage Werewolf'. Though laughable at a surface level, the image of a post-pubescent lycanthrope, complete with "braces on my fangs" and suffering "puberty rites and puberty wrongs", complete with a slavering, slobbering performance from Lux that would surely make Lee Strasberg applaud, becomes utterly believable. Or how about the murderous 'TV Set' that offers, "I cut your head off and put in my TV set / I use your eyeballs for dials"?


 It is technically moronic and rudimentary, and that is one of the album's main strengths. Unencumbered by musical, Songs The Lord Taught Us suggests that musicians are the people least qualified to make rock & roll and are better off presenting online tutorials about guitar tones and body finishes while taking a coffee break from selling guitar strings. The only scales that matter here are the ones used to weigh out your stash. An accomplished musician would never have dreamt up the brilliantly atonal yet hypereffective fuzz break that colours 'TV Set', or the gloriously skuzzy and distorted single chord, complete with string scrapes, that lies at the heart of 'Garbageman' before taking flight into a voyage of unhinged chaos. The tutored would have done their very best to minimise or eradicate the feedback, but not The Cramps; and their instinctive embrace of bedlam simply adds to the appeal. This is music that doesn't stand on convention. It drags convention into a back alley and works it over with switchblades and motorcycle chains, leaving it bloody, bruised and ready to be cleared away with the trash in the morning.


 Much has been said about who played what on the album. In later years, Ivy claimed credit for many of the guitar parts deployed throughout, alleging that Bryon Gregory's extracurricular chemical activities conspired to keep him out of the studio. But, as the line goes, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"; I'll say that Gregory is responsible for the lashings of sustained and fuzzed noise that drones throughout the album. 'Sunglasses After Dark' is a case in point. Producing a racket akin to a punch-up in a bee house that's been lobbed into an echo chamber, the guitar replicates the less benign effects of LSD and creates a more hellish environment for the song's hoodlum aspirations. Ivy is free to stamp her uncompressed twanging over the top as she liberally dips into Link Wray's 'Ace Of Spades' for inspiration.


 It's worth taking note of Nick Knox's role at the heart of this psychotic chaos. With no bass guitars at the lower end of the sound spectrum, Knox fills out that space with a greater emphasis on his bass drum and floor toms. This is deceptively simple yet effective stuff that adds to the air of menace while creating a superb trance-like effect. Just check 'Zombie Dance' for evidence. Like opener 'TV Set', Knox's work on the floor toms underpins the trashy guitars that slash throughout, fattening the sound before finally letting rip in the chorus and detonating the track.


 As well as creating its own murky universe, Songs The Lord Taught Us is a gateway to a world that had largely been forgotten about by 1980, and Lux and Ivy were certainly forward about looking backwards. A cursory glance over the songwriting credits on the album's red label reveals a number of songwriters beyond the Rorschach/Interior partnership; in those pre-internet days, the curious searched through record racks and crates to find the source of these covers – Jimmy Stewart's 'Rock On The Moon', The Sonics' 'Strychnine', The Johnny Burnette Trio's 'Tear It Up' and Link Wray among others. To meet other people who could point you in the direction was akin to joining the Masons. This writer has very fond memories of finding himself in a dimly lit bar called Le Petite J in Limoges, France in 1986. Run by a pair of long-haired veterans of the Paris 1968 riots, the exposed brickwork walls of the bar were adorned with framed posters of The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and, of course, The Cramps. A conversation was soon struck up and, as talk turned to The Cramps, I was introduced for the very first time to the serrated joys of Link Wray. Not only was this like finding the missing (ahem) link, there was also the realisation that truly raw and primal music existed well before the supposed Year Zero proposed by punk rock. Over the course of several bottles of potent Jenlain beer, the hosts gave me a crash course in rock & roll and psychedelia at its most primitive, and with it the knowledge that things weren't quite how they'd been or ever would be again. What was important here was catching that original wild, unencumbered and undiluted spirit of rebellion and making sure it remained untarnished by notions of taste, commercialism and nice manners.


 The cover art for Songs The Lord Taught Us tells what we'll find inside before a note of music is played. Shrouded in darkness, The Cramps look like a gang of twisted hoods ready to corrupt and pervert. To the left Poison Ivy peers down on us, her red hair cascading over her shoulder. Lux, his hair stacked high and his eyes giving a thousand-yard stare, is straight out of a laboratory, as if gasping air for the very first time. Behind him is Nick Knox, ready to start to a knife fight. But it's the figure of Bryan Gregory that beguiles and haunts. His leathery, pockmarked skin barely stretches over his chiselled cheekbones; his hair, parted to the side with a long, bleached fringe hanging to one side, is a hellish reading of Phil Oakey; on his tattooed left arm he wears not one but two watches. And the eyes – the eyes! – are set in deep sockets, their whites only hinted at, resting beneath arched brows and glowering with psychopathic intent. And if that wasn't enough, he's wearing bones for jewellery. And then there's the logo; fresh from some B-movie horror flick it speaks as loudly as the image it adorns. This, then, is the complete package: sex, horror, illicit thrills and temptation rolled into one irresistible package.


 Songs The Lord Taught Us is a great place for the novice to start and for the aficionado to return to. This is where, for good or for ill, psychobilly kicked off - but while The Cramps were frequently imitated, they were never bettered. Their encyclopedic knowledge of first generation rock & roll and the trashier aesthetics that surrounded it was unrivalled and ensured a deep-rooted love that was palpable throughout their music. In some respects, The Cramps represent an alternate version of folk music, a communication of art from the gutter that's every bit as American as Jackson Pollock or Truman Capote. They became as influential as the avatars they championed and maintained their standards of rebellion. That fiercely independent stance, which increased in reaction to legal wrangles with their record label after the release of second album Psychedelic Jungle, found them shunning the mainstream before storming it on their own terms with a surprise hit single (1989's 'Bikini Girls With Machine Guns'), festival headline slots and the occasional TV guest appearance.


 But it's with Songs The Lord Taught Us that their blueprint is established. This is a glorious, hermetically sealed world of dark delights and puerile pursuits. Take the plunge and go down to their lair. You won't come back the same, but you'll be all the better for it.
  Despite the pioneering work of women guitarists such as Beverly "Guitar" Watkins and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 1950s and early 1960s rock 'n' roll has been largely associated with men. Though they fell below the radar during the British Invasion and the psychedelic "flower child" period that followed, the wild sounds that once scared millions of parents and was dubbed "the devil's music" by many a preacher were resurrected like Frankenstein's monster in the 1970s. The mad scientists behind it were a guitarist by the name of Poison Ivy Rorschach and the band she co-founded and led with her husband, vocalist Lux Interior, called The Cramps.




 Born Kristy Marlana Wallace, Ivy developed a passion for music — especially early rock 'n' roll, R&B, country and blues; a defiant, "bad girl" aesthetic; and a natural, total aversion to conformity while growing up in California. Fate took a turn one day when she was hitchhiking during her freshman year at Sacramento State University. Erick Lee Purkhiser (now better known as Lux) and a friend stopped to give her a ride. The two like-minded spirits bonded over shared interests in music and pop culture, fell in love and began to cultivate the seeds of The Cramps. As partners in crime, they delved even further into rock 'n' roll, developing a major record-collecting habit — their passion for obscure singles even drove them to trek to Sun Records' Memphis warehouse, where they bought them by the boxload. After a stint living in Lux's hometown of Akron, Ohio, the two landed in New York in 1975 and put their musical plan into action. They cycled through a couple of formations with drummers Pam Ballam (Pam Beckerleg) and Miriam Linna (who would go on to co-found Norton Records) before settling as a four-piece: Ivy, Lux, and fellow Midwest transplants, guitarist Bryan Gregory (Pam's brother, Greg Beckerleg) and drummer Nick Knox.




First at Max's Kansas City, and then at CBGB, The Cramps began casting its spell of primitive rock 'n' roll, horror movies, psychedelic weirdness and raw sexuality on New York's burgeoning punk scene. Musically speaking, the band was unlike any of its peers, but its fiery, ass-shaking shows quickly made The Cramps one of the most revered live bands of the day. Dressed in sequins and leopard print, Ivy laid down guitar licks and stomping rhythms with an unflappable cool while Lux twisted and slithered around the stage (and often, the speakers), and Bryan basked in his own brand of fuzzed-out freakiness. The effect was transfixing, a little uncomfortable and wholly unique. Henry Rollins, explaining the power of The Cramps' early shows during a spoken word set, said, "Unsurprisingly, they are not in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. They should have been the second or third band in...They were like superstars and movie monsters to us."




After releasing two singles in 1978 (later compiled on the band's Gravest Hits EP), The Cramps headed to Memphis to record its debut album with Alex Chilton at ground zero of many of the band's own favorite recordings: Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio, better known as Phillips Recording. Released in 1980 on IRS Records, Songs the Lord Taught Us contained a mix of originals and covers chosen from the band's live set — though since The Cramps often paid homage to classics with a riff here or a lyric there, the lines between them were often blurred. Boiling over with swagger and sweat, "TV Set" and "Garbageman" were instant punk classics; covers of the Sonics' "Strychnine" and '50s standard "Fever" (written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell) were both true to the originals' spirits, but the album's stark production and Lux's impassioned, unhinged vocal delivery gave them a more maniacal edge.


 Although Ivy later stated she didn't feel the production on Songs the Lord Taught Us completely reflected the band's "toughness," it's hard to come up any record that packs more '50s / '60s flavor with an overarching sense of madness 35-plus years later. By the time the album was released, rockabilly revival was in full swing, with the emergence of artists such as Robert Gordon and The Stray Cats (even Queen got into the action with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"), but The Cramps were no revivalists. While the band's sense of humor and irreverence is everywhere on Songs the Lord Taught Us, including "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and "Zombie Dance," The Cramps were totally serious when it came to its craft.


 Through the next several decades, up until Lux Interior's heartbreaking, sudden passing in 2009, the couple remained ferociously dedicated to its mission of carrying the torch of original rock 'n' roll — in all its grit, sex, and glory — to the present. In the process, Lux and Ivy changed the scope of rock music, although they are often shockingly overlooked, or misinterpreted as shtick or a novelty act. Though The Cramps is often credited for inspiring generations of punk, rockabilly and psychobilly bands, its influence can be found across a wide swath of genres from neo-garage and surf to hard rock and metal — anywhere that danger and sex are cause for celebration. (Bands as diverse as Nouvelle Vague, Spoon and Queens of the Stone Age have all covered The Cramps' songs.) It's also fair to say that Ivy is responsible for introducing generations of listeners to the sound of rock 'n' roll guitar in the vein of Linl Wray, Duane Eddy and many among the Nuggets set. With the The Cramps' debut album, Songs the Lord Taught Us, she cast the first stone.


 
Poison Ivy has always been a bad girl. Born Kristy Wallace, her family moved a lot growing up so she never had time to make friends at her new schools. She said she always felt like an outsider so she bought into the feeling by becoming the bad girl, wearing heavy makeup, sexy clothes and smoking.




Kristy Wallace became Poison Ivy at Sacramento State University. The name was slightly influenced from Batman but also from the Coasters song "Poison Ivy"





Lux and Poison Ivy met while she was hitchhiking, Lux and a friend gave her a ride. They met again during their class Art & Shamanism. Lux sat next to Poison Ivy and the rest is history… rock n’ roll history.




When Poison Ivy and Lux lived in New York, Ivy worked as a dominatrix at the Victorian. She had been a waitress previously but found being a dominatrix paid much better than any job she had before.




The Cramps first show was November 1, 1976 at CBGB with fellow Ohioans, the Dead Boys. Mirriam Linna was on drums at the time. She was replaced by Nick Knox and went on to start Norton Records with her husband in 1986.




Poison Ivy’s hero is Link Wray. He is her favourite guitarist and you can definitely see his influence on The Cramps’ music. What she admires about his style is “the drama that’s created by not overplaying”




When the Cramps played their infamous show at the Napa State Mental Hospital the inmates thought the Cramps looked crazier than they were so they kept shouting “Ward T” at them. “Ward T” was apparently the unit where they keep patients for life. Their performance at Napa State inspired over a dozen patients to attempt escape.




In 1982 The Cramps filed a lawsuit against their label, IRS. The lawsuit dragged on and during this time, IRS released both Off the Bone and Bad Music for Bad People without the Cramps’ approval.




The Cramps’ first bass player was Jennifer "Fur" Dixon from the Hollywood Hillbillys who went on tour with them for a few months in 1986. She was replaced by Candy Del Mar who played on Stay Sick.




Poison Ivy had complete control of the Cramps. She managed them as a band and as a gang. “If something bad was happening, Ivy would snap her fingers and point and we’d have to beat someone up. It was like being in a gang– like a juvenile delinquent band– and it was great” said Kid Congo Powers.




‘Rock’n’Roll Is For Weirdos’ – Lux Interior Remembered




The first memory that sprung to my mind when I heard that Lux Interior had died was of a moment during one of The Cramps’ many shows at the (also recently deceased) Astoria. Can’t remember exactly which one: there were loads, and they were all amazing. Anyway…
Lux is onstage, PVC pants, slicked-back rockabilly hair, menacing and ugly/beautiful, flanked as he has been all his life by his astonishingly sexy, sequin-skirted bride/greatest-punk-guitarist-of all-time-bar-maybe-Johnny-Thunders Poison Ivy.They’re tearing through the instrumental freakout bit of a version of The Count Five’s garage-rock classic ‘Psychotic Reaction’ at a fucking ludicrous velocity. He’s shakin’ his still skinny hips like a teenage werewolf, swigging from a bottle of cheap red wine. All of a sudden, out of the chaotic mass of flesh in front of him, someone throws a trainer towards his head.
 Lux carries on shakin’ his hips and, without missing a beat, catches the missile, pours it full of red wine, and swigs it empty. He throws the shoe back in the crowd, carries on playing. It’s just a moment, one of many in a night, nay a lifetime, dedicated to degenerate rock ‘n’ roll showmanship. But it stays with me, perfectly encapsulating what he and his band represent in my mind.


 There are loads more: Kathy from our office was just this minute recounting the time she saw The Cramps in Leicester in 1984, how Lux came on stage in a pair of PVC trousers that split all of 30 seconds in to the show, and how she watched as they split further and further as the night went on. Not that Lux gave a shit. She said: “They were a band who, when you saw them, you genuinely felt like anything could happenA few words about The Cramps: on a basic, headline level, one of the greatest most dangerous, anything-could-happen dark-hearted rock and roll groups ever. More specifically, the band with the most clearly defined, most vehemently adhered to set of aesthetics ever.


 They took B-movie horror shtick, aligned it with wildest rockabilly sensibility and made something fantastically wild and exciting that they dubbed “psychobilly”. You can read the detailed history somewhere else. You can get the detailed discography somewhere else. It doesn’t really matter, as all their ideals did not involve much in the way of musical development.


 “Every time we release an album,” Lux told – of all publications – Loaded magazine way back in 1998, “we get people saying, ‘Oh, it’s just the same as all their others. Why can’t they grow up and evolve?’ Well, we feel like we arrived when we started. It’s not that we were ever using The Cramps to arrive at some future evolutionary point. It might not to be to everybody’s taste. It’s for those who can identify with being a misfit, a hoodlum, a fuck up, a weirdo. That’s why we called the new album ‘Big Beat From Badsville’. ’Cos you really have to come from some sort of Badsville, you’re just not going to be equipped to deal with it.”


 It’s the signature of all the truly great bands, all the bands that truly matter. There’s an assumption in modern music that it’s all about being “interesting”. Dunno about you, but to me that is the absolute antithesis of what rock ‘n’ roll is about. Rock ‘n’ roll is about purity of ideas, about getting the crazy ideas out of your head and into the world in the most untainted, brash, least thought-through manner possible. The Cramps never thought much about what they were doing. They just fucking did it, because they couldn’t not do it.


 Let’s leave the last word to Erick Lee Purkhiser – aka Lux Interior:

 “We’re always asked how long we can keep going. But it’s not really an issue for us. Besides, what else could we do? We must be among the world’s most unemployable people. If we hadn’t been in The Cramps, I can’t imagine the trouble we’d be in. We often find ourselves wondering about the difference between what we do and being locked up. It’s a pretty thin line. Rock ‘n’ roll is the greatest way for weirdos like us to find a purpose in life. In that sense, our goal has never really changed. We just want to carry on getting away with it. Not getting caught – that’s our only ambition.”

 Mission accomplished. Goodbye, Garbageman.
 


 

DAY 467.
Talking Heads................................................Remain In Light   (1980)












Released in October 1980, Remain In Light ably demonstrated that pop could be both for your head and your feet. The making of this album divided the group smartly into two camps, Eno and Byrne and Weymouth and Frantz with Harrison playing mediator.Although Eno was to leave the equation, the tension from the record dogged the group and led to their split in the coming years.

DAY 468.
Joy Division................................................Closer   (1980)













One of the most chilling albums ever made, with droning guitars, icy bass lines and stentorian vocals. And that’s not even considering the lyrics, about singer Ian Curtis' epilepsy and failing marriage. When Curtis hanged himself at age 23 on May 18th, 1980, Closer officially became the stuff of rock legend.

DAY 469.
Iron Maiden..................................................Iron Maiden   (1980)










The debut album for legendary heavy metal act Iron Maiden is widely regarded as an innovative classic; Iron Maiden took the song structures, musical stylings, and skill of heavy metal and shoved it through a punk filter to produce a sound that would soon be widely imitated – even if the punk style displeases band leader Steve Harris, who went on a different direction in all subsequent album.


 Although the band’s first seven albums are generally classid as their "classic era" the lineup on this first effort is not the “classic lineup.” While anchored by primary songwriter and bassist Steve Harris, and guitarist Dave Murray – the only members to appear on every album – the drums were held down by Clive Burr, vocals by Paul Di'Anno and secondary guitar duties by Dennis Stratton, all of whom would be replaced by the release of Piece of Mind.


 "Running Free" and "Sanctuary were both released as singles from this album, with the former remaining a concert mainstay for the bulk of the band’s career. The songs peaked on the UK charts at #34 and #29 respectively.


 The commercial and critical success of Iron Maiden and the popularity of the band as a live act helped Iron Maiden give a serious boost to the nascent New Wave of British Metal, in both visibility and credibility.

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 436.
Joy Division....................................................Unknown Pleasures   (1979)

Despite or perhaps because of the tragedy surrounding Joy Division, the band has had an indelible effect on the post-punk music scene, which later morphed into the 1980s gothic rock, industrial and alternative rock genres inspiring bands such as The Sisters of Mercy and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Good read (as always) Mr C.

But need to take umbrage with whoever wrote the above comment (about JAMC).

They loathed Joy Division (or Jim Reid did anyway).



 

DAY 460.
The Soft Boys.................................Underwater Moonlight   (1980)














Underwater Moonlight is another of these little gems that this book coughs up now and again, I've never heard of the Soft Boys before so this kinda took me by surprise, to be honest I wasn't really expecting much, so this was quite a welcome listen.


When the album started and the first track "I Wanna Destroy You" began I thought it was a version Bowie's Heroes for the first few seconds of the intro, this is seemingly one of their best songs and have to agree, there wasn't a track that went on too long or got on my nerves on this record, their style/genre for me is pretty hard to nail down as every track it seemed was heading in a different direction, but for this listener that was a bonus, short songs with good variation, always a winner in my humbles.


Vocally and lyrically this was quite a ride, "Old Pervert" had a bit of a "Voodoo Chile" intro, and the unforgettable lines

"They say that I'm weird and disenfectant is the only thing I drink
Ah, but cleanliness of the soul is more important, don't you think?


As I said earlier this has a great mix of styles and some really weird but wonderful lyrics, all the tracks are worth a listen but have to say I especially liked, "I Wanna Destroy You," "Underwater Moonlight," "Old Pervert" and "Insanely Jealous," but to be honest you could play any track and I would love it.


The Soft Boys sound familiar to me although I've never heard them before, I don't know if they sound like band's I've heard before or band's I've heard before sound like them, but bottom line is I really liked this LP a lot, so this album will be going into my vinyl collection.










Bits & Bobs;


When Syd Barrett gave up music for art, another Cambridge musician emerged to take on his mantle. Robyn Hitchcock (3 March 1953, London, England) started out as a solo performer and busker before becoming a member of B.B. Blackberry And The Swelterettes, then the Chosen Few, the Worst Fears, and Maureen And The Meatpackers. It was with the last-named that Hitchcock first recorded (in 1976), although the results were not released until much later. His next group, Dennis And The Experts, became the Soft Boys in 1976. The Soft Boys’ first recording session was in March 1977, by which point the line-up was Hitchcock (vocals, guitar, bass), Alan Davies (guitar), Andy Metcalfe (b. 3 March 1956, Bristol, England; bass), and Morris Windsor aka Otis Fagg (drums). The original sessions remain unreleased but the same line-up also recorded a three-track EP - known as the Give It To The Soft Boys - for the local Cambridge label Raw Records. This was released in the autumn of 1977, after which Davies left and Kimberley Rew (b. England) was installed on guitar, harmonica, and vocals. The Soft Boys, now signed to Radar Records, released the single ‘(I Wanna Be An) Anglepoise Lamp’, but it was not considered representative of their innovative live work. Forming their own Two Crabs label they released Can Of Bees in 1979, after which they replaced Metcalfe with Matthew Seligman (ex-Camera Club). Jim Melton, who had been playing harmonica for a while, also left. Their remaining releases came on the Armageddon label and included Underwater Moonlight, an album that is considered one of Hitchcock’s finest moments.


 The Soft Boys broke up early in 1981 and Hitchcock went on to enjoy an erratic solo career, recruiting along the way Metcalfe and Windsor to form the Egyptians. Rew joined Katrina And The Waves and wrote the classic ‘Going Down To Liverpool’ (later a hit single for the Bangles), while Seligman joined Local Heroes SW9 and continued to contribute to Hitchcock’s solo efforts. The Soft Boys have periodically re-formed to play reunion gigs, including an extensive transatlantic tour in 2001. During the same year, Matador Records released a superb expanded edition of Underwater Moonlight. Hitchcock, Rew, Seligman and Windsor recorded a new studio album for the label the following year.







After approaching Robyn Hitchcock's back catalogue via "Invisible Hitchcock", it's been plain sailing ever since. That particular out-takes compilation is so sprawling in its own unique brand of diverse schizophrenia, with all kinds of off-the-wall aural sketches podding off at random, that "Underwater Moonlight" seemed so straight forward. The thing is, it actually is. It's just good honest psychedelic pop music in all of the finest traditions.



A big influence at the time and since on all kinds of American college bands, not least REM, Pavement and Yo La Tengo, "Underwater Moonlight" is a text book example of that old chesnut the "best kept secret". It really is. If you meet another person who owns this LP it's like a spiritual gathering has just convened. An unspoken call has gone out and here you are, two like minds basking in a tangible, electric glow. Once you come under the spell of this album, you can't escape it and everyone else that owns it is part of your flesh.




Opener "I Wanna Destroy You" and sitar-fused "Positive Vibrations" seem to be half olive-branches to the Indie scene of the time and half classic 60s garage, though with Japanese fuzz boxes. "Kingdom Of Love" is one of Hitchcock's truly great songs, a beast of a riff rampaging across rock's skyline in search of human brains. "Old Pervert" is a structural orgasm, great streams of melodies precariously overlapping with each other, like Beefheart and Lennon playing kerplunk. "Queen Of Eyes" is a marvellous Byrds-like two minute gem and "Insanely Jealous" is possibly the finest ode to paranoia written in the last 25 years. The title track is a delight ... Fairport Convention jamming with Syd's Floyd, all jaw-droppingly underpinned with the most visually emotive lyrics you can imagine. Statues, Squid, Museums, Ocean-floor eco-systems and Octagenarians all converge within these four minutes.



Recently reissued with a whole extra CD of rehearsal tapes, "Underwater Moonlight" is, along with "I Often Dream Of Trains" and "Eye", one of Robyn Hitchcock's finest moments. Not only that, it's one of the finest British indie LPs ever made.





Here's a Q&A with Robyn Hitchcock who contributed, guitar, vocals, rhythm bass as well as writing all the songs on the album;

 The world first became aware of Robyn Hitchcock in 1980. He was with the Soft Boys, singing:Ahh aah aah Wanna destroy you!It was the punk era, and the song boosted the band. But it also deceived. Hitchcock wasn’t, as it turned out, much of a nihilist. Now 63, he has proved more durable and complicated than his vintage. Hundreds of songs have poured forth, psychedelia-tinged, engraved with daft and sorrowful words.My dead wife’s upstairs
She’s still wearing flaresShe talks out loudBut no one hears


 His work became more personal, too, or apparently so.I water the tomatoes and I think of youNo one’s ever watered me the way you do


 And so a career that might have been a good bet to burn out with the Soft Boys has taken a long and curious path: from busking in Cambridge, England, across what he describes as the digital void of the ’80s, to Nashville, where he now lives. And though Hitchcock has had only a smattering of radio hits — “Balloon Man,” most prominently — his work has inspired devotion among songwriters of the next generation, including Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, who has been a cheerleader.

  Before a show at the Arden Club in Delaware recently, Hitchcock sat down to talk, with wry detachment, about taking root in the ’80s despite his affinity for the ’60s, his admiration of Bob Dylan’s work, and his own next album.


  Q: How did you end up in Nashville?


 A: My partner, Emma [Swift], was living there when we met. She’s Australian but she’s — they call her an Americana singer. We are both Americana acts, funnily enough. Mature Brits of my age — Billy Bragg, Richard Thompson, Nick Lowe and myself — are now deemed Americana artists. Ten years ago, we would have been alt-country.

 Q: That seems like a pretty broad category. What does “Americana” mean now, anyway?


 A: It means it doesn’t have tattoos and it doesn’t use a lot of amplifiers — it’s anything that doesn’t require a lot of plumage or volume, and as you get older you tend to shed both. I’m probably about a quarter of the volume and I’m half the speed of the Soft Boys. As you get older, you get quieter and slower and you become Americana. It helps that I’m in Nashville now.

 Q: You’ve been around long enough that people are almost startled by your longevity. Has your approach to performing and to writing songs changed?


 A: I think you gain things and you lose things. You get weathered. When you’re younger, you have to rely on your imagination and your intuition. When you’re older, there’s that much more to remember and much less to imagine. More and more of my stuff is based on people that I’ve known and on things that actually happened.

 Q: When you’ve got so many songs, and fans who began with you more than 30 years ago, how do you balance their expectation for the oldies and what you’re working on now?


 A: Fortunately, having never been burdened with a hit, I’m not tethered to the past.

 Q: You’ve had some hits.


 A: I’ve had some radio hits, but it’s not like, “Oh, my God, if he doesn’t play that one I’ll feel cheated.” I’ve accepted the fact that I’m rooted in the past of my listeners and myself. Doing all this [touring] pays for my songwriting habit. People really get something out of hearing the old ones, the songs they heard when they were 15, and I’ll play some. I then scuttle to Nashville and I spend my disposable income on recording new songs. There’s piles of stuff lying around, which will probably come out later.

 Q: Your most recent album, “The Man Upstairs,” had as many covers as original songs, including ones by the Doors and Psychedelic Furs. Coming from someone so well known for writing their own, the covers came as a surprise.


 A: Well, you have these songs lying around in you for years. They’re where you start from. They’re part of your matrix, and they don’t necessarily dissolve and go away. They give you something to aim at and miss. They remain in you, and I think, after all, they become yours. You don’t collect the publishing royalties, but they are.

 For instance, Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” is still my favorite song, and I’ve been singing that for 45 years off and on. It took me 15 years to even feel I could do it in public. But I feel it belongs to me more than it does to Dylan, because if he does it, he will drop a couple of verses, scramble the tune, sing the words inaudibly, and he knows his ghouls will be saying: “Great Caesar’s Ghost! Bob did ‘Visions of Johanna.’ Oh, master.”

 Q: As influences on your work, you’re as likely to cite “Dr. Who” as your admiration to Bob Dylan.   A: Dr. Who was a creature of the mid-’60s who was a sort of trans-dimensional sage. As a 10- or 11-year-old, I thought: “Oh, my God, this is what I want to be. I just want to be a trans-dimensional sage. That’s not asking too much?” He flies through time and space, but he doesn’t know where or when he’s going to land. It’s all random. He has a sonic screwdriver, but he can’t find it. How human is that?

 Q: What’s the forthcoming album going to be like?


 A: It looks at my old life in England, and some of the characters in it, through the prism of Nashville. Brendan Benson [of the Raconteurs] produced and engineered it, and he prompted me to return one more time to the two-guitars, bass, drums and harmonies template, cut this time with Nashville players and a little pedal-steel. I’ve always been drawn to the portal between psychedelia and country, though whether this is either is questionable.




  


 

DAY 471.
The Jam.......................................................Sound Affects   (1980)













The Angry Young Man, is the central figure in postwar British Culture, from Jimmy Porter in John Osbourne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger to the punk explosion of the late 1970s.



Few band's explored this with keener insight than The Jam. With a string of ever more confident and potent albums, their chief songwriter and incendiary singer-guitarist Paul Weller became the bard of bile, giving voice to very British frustrations and dreams.









 

DAY 472.
Tom Waits...........................................Heartattack And Vine   (1980)












In hindsight, the seeds of change were planted here, though no one noticed at the time. Heartattack And Vine was Tom Waits seventh album for Asylum, and he had still not moved beyond cult status, his beatnik barfly image on the edge of wearing out what little welcome it still received. A pity; this is one of the strongest sets of his early period.


 

Sorry about getting so far behind but work and family commitments have made this impossible of late, will see how far I can catch up today, but may well have to be like/don't like, buy/wont buy and a wee bit of bits & bobs 'til I catch up and get back to the way it was intended, one a day.

Day 461.
The Cure..............................................Seventeen Seconds   (1980)














Have to admit from the outset that I do really like The Cure, but maybe a wee bitty later' as this album apart from "A Forest" and the odd track didn't really impress me at all, and never got drawn in by the opening track, I always think the first track is like the first chapter in a book, if it doesn't grab you attention straight away your interest goes down a level, especially if you haven't read/listened to them before, maybe I like the more hook driven Cure more.


This album wont be going into my collection




Bits & Bobs;



The band formed in 1976 in West Sussex, England. It was the product of several lineup and band name changes amongst school friends Robert Smith, Michael Dempsey, and Lol Tolhurst. They initially began a band, The Obelisk, for a one off performance, before forming Malice. They then became Easy Cure and signed a contract with German Label Hansa Records.


Refusing to record covers, the group were dropped from the label. They renamed themselves The Cure and were picked up by the Fiction record label. Fiction released the band's debut album Three Imaginary Boys in 1979.


Before playing local pubs like the Rocket in Crawley and the Cambridge in Horley, the band played dances at their Methodist church, where they were members of the youth club.


 
The band's second album, 1980's Seventeen Seconds, and its follow-up, Pornography, established the band's Gothic Rock sound, influenced by the members nihilistic attitudes at the time. Touring the album, the band adopted their signature style of wild hair and smeared lipstick.


 
They chose their band name using a technique one of their heroes, David Bowie, sometimes used to compose lyrics: cutting up phrases and selecting one randomly. The one they pulled out of a hat was "Easy Cure," part of a lyric to a song they were working on. Robert Smith later convinced them to change it to "The Cure," as it sounded more punk.


 
In 1983, the band adopted a more pop-based sound, at the demand of Polydor scout Chris Parry, who was concerned about tensions within the band following the departure of bassist Simon Gallup. The change in direction spawned the band's first UK Top Ten hit with "The Love Cats"


 
In 1989, members of the band demanded the dismissal of Tolhurst, whose alcoholism was, according to Smith, "detrimental to everything we'd do." (NME, 1989). After Tolhurst's departure, Smith was the only remaining original member.


The same year, the band released their ninth album Disintegration. The record featured "Love Song," the group's biggest American hit, charting at #2 in the Billboard Hot 100.


 
In 1992, The Cure released their tenth album Wish, which reached #1 on the UK charts, helped along by the success of one of their signature songs "Friday I'm in Love." Wish was nominated for the Best Alternative Music Album Grammy award, but lost to Bone Machine by Tom Waits. Their 2000 album Bloodflowers was also nominated in that category, losing to Kid A by Radiohead.


 
The band contributed the song "More Than This" to the soundtrack for the 1998 science fiction thriller The X-Files.


 
In 1986, the band re-signed with the Fiction label in a deal that gave Smith exclusive control of the band, essentially making co-founder Tolhurst an employee. They left Fiction in 2001 and were signed by Geffen Records in 2003. They released a self-titled album in 2004.


 
In 2009, The Cure received an NME award for Godlike Genius.


 
In 2012, the band headlined Reading and Leeds festival.


 
Robert Smith appeared in the "Mecha-Streisand" episode of the American animated comedy South Park, providing the voice for his own character. The show's creators are big fans of The Cure and were thrilled to have him on the show; for Smith, it gave him credibility amongst his many nieces and nephews who loved the show.


 
Smith and Tolhurst were five years old when they first met at St. Francis of Assisi School in Crawley.


 
After Tolhurst was fired in 1989, he filed a lawsuit that wasn't decided until 1994, when he lost the case. The proceedings were acrimonious and pitted him against his childhood friend Smith. Years later, they buried the hatchet and Smith had Tolhurst join the band for some shows in 2011 where they played their first three albums in their entireties.


 
Robert Smith was asked to do the soundtrack of the Tim Burton movie Edward Scissorhands, but had to decline as he was busy recording. It didn't stop the lead actor Johnny Depp basing his hair on Smith's coiffure.





As probably the most unsuccessful album in the Cure's early career, their second album, Seventeen Seconds feels too cold for its own good. You see, this is meant to be a departure from the Wire-esque minimalist post-punk of their debut (Three Imaginary Boys / Boys Don't Cry) and is trying to be a mature and more personal affair. As the Cure's leader, Robert Smith has stated he was trying to bridge the sound of some depressive music staples, such as David Bowie's Low, Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks among others. However, if this album fails, it's mostly due to a feeling of indifference.



You see, many of the Cure's next albums would be greats, such as the dark-and-gloomy Faith and the gothic death marches of Pornography to more accessible albums like the dance-popish The Head on the Door and the dark arena rock of Disintegration. However, these albums work despite often being utterly depressing because the listener could connect with them. Seventeen Seconds, however, is awash by too much detachment in the way it sounds, mostly from the mix and production, which drowns out its should-have-been effective vocals into heavy-sounding death ballads.




Songs such as "Secrets" and "In Your House" sound lifeless; the orchestrations may be technically good, but it does not let the lyrics or the audience truly breathe, and the instruments are probably too loud, where they should find the bridge between rock and utilizing tender beauty. "Three" falls into the same category; it needs to be said that the album is indeed started well enough, and has a fine-enough middle section mostly due to the one masterful song in the still-classic "A Forest."



"A Reflection" does open up the album on an interesting note; it's solely instrumental and sounds like a choir, thus establishing some nice mood, especially when paired with the song "Play for Today" that is solid enough it carries the dull first half of this record on its shoulders.



"A Forest" is often featured on best-of comps for the band, and sometimes even multi-artist sets. In many ways it is one of those tracks that stands the test of time, perfectly encapsulating Smith's gloomy mindset as well as standing on its own amongst the Joy Division-like songs of the time period. It may also give the album back some of its life, as the next song, "M" sounds like Seventeen Seconds may be reanimated for the rest of the album, yet it is not. Rather, it gets into overlength with "At Night" and back to passiveness with the closing title track.




So, as "A Forest" might be around long after we die, sadly the same can't be said about much of the rest of Seventeen Seconds. Lastly, it's a good thing they made much more music that made them a staple of the same sound that they mostly fumbled with on this album.

Robert Smith used to tell his record company he had a fear of flying - purely so he could cut down on his touring commitments. "For about three years, 1989 to 1992, I kept the pretence that I had this phobia," recalls The Cure frontman. "We did two American tours sailing over on the QE2, which was very civilized."



 Cure mainman Robert Smith enjoys eating extremely hot curries. "I myself am a phaal eater," he explained. In case you wondered.


One of The Cure's earliest tours, in 1979, was as support to Siouxsie And The Banshees. Robert Smith filled on in guitar for the headline band, an experience that profoundly changed his musical outlook: "It was so different to what we were doing with The Cure. Before that, I'd wanted us to be like the Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello, the punk Beatles. Being a Banshee really changed my attitude to what I was doing."


Once, while extremely drunk, Robert Smith bet a friend that he could go around the outside of a hotel jumping from balcony to balcony. "It took about an hour," he recalls. "And once I got to a certain point it seemed farther to go back to where I could hear [his wife] Mary screaming. It was lamentable, like one of those Beavis and Butt-Head 'I bet you can't do that' things."

Despite having no kids of his own, Robert Smith lavishes gifts on his nephews and nieces, taking them to Euro Disney every Christmas. He recalls: "Minnie Mouse coming up to me and asking me for my autograph with all the children looking on in absolute amazement was one of the best and most disturbing moments of my life."


Cure frontman Robert Smith voiced himself in the first season of 'South Park' at the request of series co-creator Trey Parker, who is a fan of the band. Smith appeared in the episode 'Mecha-Streisand', where he fought a giant mechanical Barbra Streisand. As he walked off triumphantly into the distance at the episode's conclusion, one of the series' main characters Kyle Broflovski shouted "'Disintegration' is the best album ever!"


The Cure are often described as a "Crawley-based band", but Robert Smith was actually born in Blackpool. He explains: "When I came down south, I actually had quite a broad Northern accent and the piss was taken out of me mercilessly at school. That probably didn't help me integrate."


At a Cure gig in LA in 1986 a deranged fan climbed on stage and started slashing away at his own body, threatening to stab himself. Robert Smith recalls: "It was pretty serious but perhaps some of the crowd who'd smoked too much dope might've thought it was some sort of art installation."

The Cure became so famous in the early 90s that Robert Smith grew to despise his band's most popular hits: "For a long time, I didn't like certain songs because I thought, 'You're to blame, you bastard. You made me popular. 'Friday I'm In Love' is a perfect example of that."


In 1981 The Cure launched a remarkable tirade against pop crooner Robert Palmer (of 'Addicted To Love' fame). They were playing before him at Belgium's Werchter festival. Deliberately stretching 'A Forest' out to 10 minutes in length, bassist Simon Gallup screamed "Fuck Robert Palmer and fuck rock and roll!" before quitting the stage. The footage is on YouTube.



 At one Cure gig in Argentina, 110,000 people turned up to a stadium that only held 60,000. The ensuing riot led to the death of a hot-dog salesman. "That was ugly," recalls Robert Smith. "It was the one time I've been really frightened with the Cure, because we were locked in this basement room and we could smell burning, sirens were going off and I thought, We're not going to get out of this."

Robert Smith has such poor eyesight he can't focus beyond the end of his hand. He wears glasses when not on stage. He explains: "I'd had really good eyesight before it suddenly started to deteriorate. I thought, 'Fuck, I'm going to be blind at this rate'. It was around when I turned 30, so it was probably stress-induced.


Robert Smith once refused permission for a 'Stars In Their Eyes' contestant to impersonate him. He explained: "To me 'Stars In Their Eyes' represents a side of British culture I abhor. I don't just pay lip service to the notion that we're doing this to be rich and famous, because we're not. We turned down the 'National Lottery', and 'Stars In Their Eyes' represents something similar to me, which is shit.
 



"M"


The Cure frontman Robert Smith wrote this for his wife Mary, who he commonly refers to as "M."


 
This might explain Smith's rather evasive answer to the inspiration for the song: "about a girl..." (Curenews, 1989)

The lyrics are even more cryptic, though perhaps most revealing is the opening line "hello image," which, given what we know about the inspiration of the song, seems to equate Mary with the reflection of Smith himself.


 
Seventeen Seconds is the second Cure album. The band was keeping the songs simple as they were refining their sound. "Their ultimate strength is their minimalism," drummer Lol Tolhurst wrote in his memoir.




"A Forest"

"A Forest," from The Cure's Seventeen Seconds album, tells a vague story of pursuit of a girl in a forest, which ends in loss. Many fans and critics regard this song in particular as a good example of The Cure's unique sound.


 
This song represents several firsts for The Cure: It garnered them their first appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops program. The album is also the only one to feature Matthieu Hartley on the keyboards exclusively. And finally, it was the first Cure single to be released on the 12-inch single record format - the alternative 7-inch record single omits the initial guitar-and-keyboard introduction, skips a few bars between the verses, and it goes to a fade-out sooner in the guitar solo ending. All this makes it two minutes shorter on the smaller single.

DAY 463.
Motorhead...............................................Ace of Spades   (1980)












This is the first time I've listened to a Motorhead album, and being honest I wont be in too much of a hurry to revisit Motorhead anytime soon. The opening track is an absolute beast of a number, probably as good a first song as you can find, but unfortunately as much as that takes you to a plateau, the rest of the numbers don't even come close to matching the electricity that "Ace Of Spades" produces.


The sound you get from the three band members is pretty awesome, but this particular album just seem to nosedive after the opener, it picked up sporadically and the closing songs "The Chase Is Better Than the Catch" and "The Hammer" weren't too shabby, but overall apart from "Ace Of Spades" which I have on countless compilation CDs, there's nothing much else that would persuade me to make a return visit.


This album wont be going into my collection





Bits & Bobs;




A "Motorhead" is someone who is addicted to amphetamines (speed).


 
Lemmy used to be the road manager for Emerson, Lake and Palmer. He was also briefly a roadie for Jimi Hendrix. Lemmy told Rolling Stone in 2010 regarding working for the guitar icon: "Whenever they needed an extra pair of hands I was right there. I didn't get the job for any talent or anything. But I did see Jimi play a lot. Twice a night for about three months."


 
Lemmy collects Nazi memorabilia.


 
Iron Maiden have a mascot named "Eddy," Motorhead have "Snaggletooth." Artist Joe Petagno came up with the idea of a gorilla-dog hybrid with wild boar tusks. Lemmy then added the helmet, chains and spit. Snaggletooth appears on most Motorhead album covers.


 
Lemmy's real name is Ian Fraser Kilminster. He acquired his nickname as a child as he was always asking to borrow money.


 
Kilmister formed Motorhead in 1975 after being fired from the band Hawkwind in 1975. Motorhead's original name was "Bastard," but was changed to "Motorhead" after the last song Lemmy wrote for Hawkwind.


 
Lemmy has acted in several movies directed by Lloyd Kaufman and released by Troma Studios, among them Tromeo & Juliet and Terror Firmer.



Lemmy's father was a vicar.


 
Lemmy didn't pick up a bass until he was 23. He had previously played guitar but, in his own words, he was "mediocrity squared."


 
Motorhead provide the entrance music for both WWE wrestler Triple H ("Play The Game"), and Triple H's wrestling stable Evolution ("Line In The Sand").


 
Lemmy likes to watch pornography on the tour bus.


 
Lemmy is often seen as the most hedonistic artist on earth. He claims to have done speed for over 20 years. Even past age 60 he claims he still does drugs every day, eats lot of junk food, and drinks a bottle of whiskey a day. He claims to have had sex with over 3000 women during his life.


 
Rumour has it that when Lemmy asked a doctor for blood purification, the doctor said that his body is so adapted to speed that pure blood would kill him.


 
Lemmy has his own game machines at home because this somewhat helps to control his gambling addiction.


 
Lemmy died of cancer on December 28, 2015 at age 70.




If I had to pick the most overrated albums of all time, I'd list Metallica's Ride the Lightning, Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, and most importantly Ace of Spades by Motörhead. This album gets a great deal of praise, and a good portion of that is right my deserved, but there is no doubting that this is an overrated album. Even Lemmy himself has said that he didn't understand what it was about the title track that people liked...




With the quarrel about how much attention Ace of Spades gets aside, this is an awesome album. It combines the classic bluesy sound of the with the heavy crunch of Overkill, while eschewing most of what dragged Bomber into being a below average album. The production hits you like a hammer over the head as soon as the first notes of Lemmy's distorted bass kick in. The production is perfect. It's raw and stripped down, highlighting Motörhead's no frills power trio sound, the bass is plenty loud, and the sound is very harsh and abrasive.




Ace of Spades sort of marks the point where Motörhead truly found themselves as musicians, with the music sounding much more natural and less forced than on any of the band's previous efforts where they seemed to remain on the side of caution. "Fast" Eddie Clarke has really made a name for himself here. The album is jammed packed with fucking awesome guitar riffs. His style varies from the proto-thrash of the title track, to the powerful punk interlude of the standout "Love Me Like a Reptile", and finally, to the bluesy style exhibited on such songs as "Fast and Loose" and the overrated "We are the Roadcrew". Even with all of this said, the technicality and musicianship is not that important to Ace of Spades. In the traditional Motörhead spirit, the emphasis is mainly on the "feel" and "taste" of the songs. All of these riffs are played very emotionally, exuding a feeling of insane classic-ness, as if this is some old 50s rock and roll. The lyrics also take on this persona, with Lemmy taking on the wording style present in older rock and roll. They range from antigenic ("Ace of Spades") to hypersexual and somewhat lackluster (on the otherwise awesome track "Fast and Loose".)




Despite Ace of Spades being an overall masterpiece, there are some issues with the album. For one, Lemmy's vocals are somewhat weak. I preferred the darker voice would assume on Iron Fist, as well as his prior, less comprehensible sound. He just sounds too cliche here. Another issue is the one filler track, "Fire Fire". I know that I praised the "classic rock and roll" vibe of this album, but this one takes it too far, sounding like some sort of retro stuff in the vein of Stray Cats or something. Other than that, Ace of Spades is a great album that any fan of metal ought to get.




Lemmy, I gotta tell ya. I get it. I understand why this album's acclaim annoys you. I get your annoyance at the fact that everyone wishes you guys broke up after Ace of Spades; how nobody wants to pay attention to your far more interesting 90s/00s discography. I get it as a fan and as an aspiring artist. But here's the problem: as an album? Ace of Spades really is that good.




How good is it? Well, it's not 100% perfect. I always found myself skipping Dance and Jailbait after Fire, Fire just to get to the killer one-two punch of Bite The Bullet/The Chase Is Better Than The Catch (which I consider to be all one song, both thematically and lyrically. Bite The Bullet the relationship is over, and with Chase the man is on the prowl again). I did warm up to Jailbait after a few years, but perhaps there is one song too many on here. Point being, this album is so goddamn good you can erase the legendary title track from history; wipe it completely from memory, start the whole thing off with Love Me Like A Reptile and STILL have one of the best goddamn albums of 1980.




Speaking of Love Me Like A Reptile, all you buttholes wondering "are there really x songs here" can go fuck yourselves. Yes, there are goddamn 12 (or 15) songs here and they are all quite distinct both in riffs and in tempos. One cursory listen to the groove metal(!) mayhem of Shoot You In The Back and the Sabbath swing of Fast & Loose is all that's required to comprehend that Motorhead was never a one speed band. Hell, The Chase Is Better Than The Catch is about as close to Living After Midnight anthemicism as one can get. The fact that Motorhead were playing that fast made them revolutionary. I realize everyone has heard the title track a million times, but they need to hear it one more time and realize that is a BASS riff. Admit it, the first time you heard that you thought it was a really sick, delightfully over-distorted guitar. Even when they played it live afterwards that riff always sounded more like a proper bass (dare I say losing a bit of spark), but not here. Here than midrangey bass just sounds so....metal! But it's a testament to the bands ears that not once does the song (nor the rest of the album) sound like it's missing a pinch of bottom end. I can't deny that bass and low end rhythm is an important and overlooked component in metal, but Motorhead in all their noisy glory manage to side step that problem with style. Motorhead has always in essence been a two (or three) guitar band with different higher end frequencies but Lemmy's always figured out how to be the glue in that pocket.




I'm also not going to challenge the notion that this album is "Fast" Eddie Clarke's finest moment as a riffer and a soloist. While his contribution to the title track is undeniable, again, that intro lick is a bass moment. However practically every single song afterwards has that absolutely deadly hook that causes you to pull your finger away from the skip button with the same speed like you just touched a piping hot radiator. The way he shreds through that final solo of Love Me Like A Reptile as well as Fire, Fire is so fucking raw yet melodic it brings a damn tear to your eye. Is it Randy Rhoads quality shredding? No, but it doesn't need to be! This is Motorhead dammit! Even Eddie's screw-ups are sonically salacious (behold the fallen and can't get up feedback foolery of We Are The Road Crew)!




Run, don't walk, to buy this album. It's likely the only studio album besides whatever recent ones are out to be on the shelves. DO NOT just listen to the title track. Matter of fact, skip it the first few listens and entertain my scenario of beginning with Love Me Like A Reptile, so you can truly appreciate everything this monster has to offer, (I might try this at a later juncture)  If you're trepidatious about not getting any hyper-speed, fret not because The Hammer will be waiting at the end to smash in your skull! Happy thrashing, I hope you don't have any fragile pottery floating around. Rather, it will be floating around once this goes on your stereo!




After moving to London in 1967, Lemmy befriended Hendrix's bassist Noel Redding and worked as a roadie for the group for eight months, doubling as Hendrix's acid dealer. When Marc Maron asked Lemmy on his WTF podcast this year if he learned anything from Hendrix, he rasped, "Yeah, I learned to give up guitar and play bass instead."



Lemmy first began playing guitar in bands in 1964, joining R&B groups the Rainmakers and the Motown Sect. That was followed by stints in the Rockin' Vickers and Opal Butterfly before he took up bass to play with the heavy space rockers Hawkwind in 1971. He sang their best-known song, "Silver Machine," which hit No. 3 on the U.K. charts, before being booted out in 1975 after he was arrested in Canada for possession of—what else?—his beloved speed. 



Motörhead served as a missing link between the high-speed punk of the Ramones and the brutal riffage of Black Sabbath. While most longhair metal was deemed unfashionable by the early British punks, Motörhead united the feuding factions, and the band's iconic "Motörhead-England" t-shirts, patches and pins were worn with pride by all. Lemmy even filled in on bass for punk pioneers The Damned and palled around with Sid Vicious. During the crossover thrash era of the mid-to-late 80s, Motorhead toured with NYC hardcore legends the Cro-Mags. 
The band's name came from a song Lemmy wrote while he was a member of the progressive rock band Hawkwind. "Motorhead" is a slang term for a "speed freak," or amphetamine user. Lemmy also considered calling the band "Bastard," but was told that they'd never get played on the BBC's "Top of the Pops" with that name.




One of Motörhead's earliest press releases boasted that the band's music was so loud that, if they moved in next door to you, "your lawn will die."Football is difficult to avoid, making a crossover into all aspects of modern life; food, drink, fashion, advertisements, beauty products, you name it! George Willis, Lemmy’s step-dad, played as a forward for the likes of Brighton and Hove Albion, and Plymouth Argyle. He even won the Third Division South title with Plymouth in 1951–52.






The original 2-LP release of 1982's "Greatest Hits" set No Remorse was packaged in a cover made from real leather.



The fanged, toothy beast that adorns the majority of Motörhead's album covers and merchandise is known affectionately by fans as "Snaggletooth," though artist Joe Petagno (who created the critter) also calls it the "War-Pig" or "The Little Bastard."


Lemmy's full name was Ian Fraser Kilmister. His nickname "Lemmy" came from his youthful addiction to slot machines, because he was always asking friends "Can you lemmy (lend me) a quid?"


Lemmy helped write four songs on Ozzy Osbourne's mega-selling No More Tears album (1991). He later said that he made more money off the royalties from those four songs than he ever did from Motörhead .



Lemmy was a big fan of the Ramones and wrote a song about them on the 1916 album ("R.A.M.O.N.E.S."). The Ramones later recorded their own version of the track, and Lemmy joined them onstage at their final concert in 1996 to perform it with them.



At Lemmy's 50th birthday party in 1995, the members of Metallica made a surprise appearance as a tribute band called "The Lemmys," dressed up in wigs and sunglasses and playing a set of Motörhead covers. Live recordings from that gig were released on Metallica's Garage Inc. album in 1998.



Motörhead was nominated for several Grammy awards during their career, but their only win was in 2005 for a cover of Metallica's "Whiplash." Lemmy later called the award a "mercy f**k" from the Grammy academy, and said that the win would've meant more to him if it had been for one of Motorhead's original songs.



During his down time from Motörhead , Lemmy was a member of Head Cat, a rockabilly group with Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom that performed songs by Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly.



In the late '70s, Lemmy was asked to teach then-new Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious how to play bass, but Lemmy gave up after only a few lessons, saying Sid was "hopeless."



Motörhead collaborated with female rockers several times. A "split EP" with British all-girl band Girlschool in 1981 was called The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. A 1982 single with Lemmy and Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics, covering the Tammy Wynette chestnut "Stand By Your Man" is widely considered to be one of the worst records ever made.



1983's Another Perfect Day was the only Motörhead album to feature Brian "Robbo" Robertson, formerly of Thin Lizzy, on guitar. Lemmy would later describe the record as "very good," but said working with the temperamental Robertson was "f**king torture." Robertson was dismissed as soon as they were done touring for the album.



Lemmy is the only band member to appear on every Motörhead release. The band employed five guitarists and four drummers during their long career.

The 2010 documentary Lemmy features accolades from friends like Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Dave Grohl, Slash, and Mick Jones of the Clash, as well as unlikely fans like Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and New Order's Peter Hook. It also delved into his strange personal life that included a penchant for collecting knives and Nazi memorabilia and his love of hanging out at Hollywood hard rock haunt the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Then 65 and battling diabetes, high blood pressure and other health woes, he was asked about his proudest achievement. His answer? "Survival."


The final Motörhead lineup - Lemmy, guitarist Phil Campbell, and drummer Mikkey Dee - was also its most solid, lasting from 1996 to 2015. This trio recorded a total of ten studio albums together (Overnight Sensation through Bad Magic).



Motorhead's final live performance took place in Berlin on December 11, 2015. Lemmy passed away two weeks later, on December 28th.



Lemmy's funeral service was live-streamed on the official Motörhead YouTube channel and was viewed by more than 200,000 people. Members of rock royalty including Dave Grohl, Lars Ulrich of Metallica, and Rob Halford of Judas Priest gave tributes during the service.






"(We Are) The Road Crew"


Lemmy wrote this for the band's road crew, who he considered "The best crew in the world."


 
This took Lemmy just 10 minutes to write.


 
During Eddie Clark's guitar solo he falls on his back, resulting in a huge feedback which lasts a couple of seconds before making a comeback and returning to the solo.


 
Lemmy wrote this number in a studio toilet in Rickmansworth, North London. He explained to Q magazine January 2010: "It was the only quiet place in the building. I had an idea and I needed somewhere to work it through. That is the only song I can remember writing in the toilet."




"The Chase Is Better Than the Catch"
 
The sentiment of the title has been echoed since, in the Deep Purple track "Knocking At Your Back Door":


It's not the kill
It's the thrill of the chase


Ian Hunter said in the 2011 documentary The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople: "The fun is the ride, but there ain't no station."


And doubtless before by some long forgotten wit in Latin or Greek before the birth of Christ.


 
"The Chase Is Better Than The Catch" is Track 11 on the 1980 Ace Of Spades album wherein it runs to 4 minutes 48 seconds. It was also released as a video. As usual it was a group composition: lyrics by bass player Lemmy with all three band members contributing to the music.


 
Guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke left the band in 1982, but on October 22, 2000 - the band's 25th anniversary concert at the Brixton Academy - he made a cameo appearance for this song alongside regular guitarist Phil Campbell. The three founder members of Motörhead died within two-and-a-half years of each other, drummer Phil Taylor the youngest at 61, and without doubt they all lived life to the full enjoying the chase like only rockers can.




"Ace of Spades"


This is Motörhead's most famous song; it is about gambling and risks. Lemmy recalled writing the song in an interview with Mojo magazine February 2011: "'Ace of Spades' is unbeatable, apparently, but I never knew it was such a good song. Writing it was just a word-exercise on gambling, all the clichés. I'm glad we got famous for that rather than for some turkey, but I sang 'the eight of spades' for two years and nobody noticed."


 
The "Ace Of Spades" is the dead man's hand, which was Wild Bill Hancock's hand as he was shot dead (he was an American sheriff who was killed during a game of poker). The hand consists of aces and eights, including the ace of spades.


 
After playing this for years, Lemmy admitted he was sick of the song, but said he kept it in the setlist because, "If I went to a Little Richard concert, I'd expect to hear Long Tall Sally."


 
This song was featured in the episode of The Young Ones called "Bambi," where Motörhead performed as the the stars of the show got to the train station.


 
This is used in the video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and also appears in the movie Superbad.




He may have embellished the tale a bit for the sake of a story, but Lemmy claimed he wrote this song in the back of a transit van traveling at 90 mph.


 
Lemmy recorded a new down-tempo blues version with bandmates Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee in 2010 for a Kronenbourg 1664 commercial. This updated more leisurely rendition, which sees Lemmy playing harmonica, emphasises the brand's assertion that this is a beer that should be "enjoyed slowly."
It was the first time Lemmy had taken the song back into the studio since it was originally released 30 years previously and director Matt Doman, who shot the ad for Kronenbourg, said it was a challenge working with the rock icon. "But it's really because he's very protective of the track," he explained. "Spending a day with him in the recording studio was a roller coaster."


 
This is one of the most commonly covered songs among Punk and Hardcore bands. Elvis Suissa of Three Bad Jacks told us why: "It's one of the greatest and most aggressive rock and roll songs I've ever heard in my life. Makes me just want to f--king scream at the top of my lungs. Every time I hear it my blood just pumps and I just want to explode. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever heard in my life."




The Three Bad Jacks version appears on their 2005 album Crazy in the Head.


 
This was produced by Vic Maile, who also worked with Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton. Motorhead were strangely receptive to some of Maile's more left-field production ideas such as adding woodblock to this song. "He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, and he was very delicate because he was diabetic," guitarist Eddie Clarke recalled to Uncut. "He had to have his Ryvita (a rye-based crispbread) at six o'clock. We couldn't get heavy with him, couldn't f--king shake him, you know what I mean? He might die! So we had to listen to him."


"If it was anyone else, we'd have told him to go and f--k off and die or tied 'em to the car and run around the car park with them," Clarke added regarding the wood block. "But because it was Vic we said, 'Oh, all right Vic...' So we're there with these blocks of wood banging them together. He put loads of reverb on and that's the sound you hear - 'dang dang dang dang dang dang CLACK.' We didn't want to upset him in case we killed him."




Sadly Maile did pass away at the age of 45 from cancer on July 11, 1989.


 
The "Desert Scene" Ace of Spades album cover was actually shot in a sandpit near Barnet, 10 miles northeast of London.


 
A campaign to send this song back into the UK Top 40 following the death of Lemmy on December 28, 2015 saw the track re-enter the singles chart at #13. This was two places higher than its original position of #15.


 
In tribute to Lemmy, who died about six weeks earlier, The Hollywood Vampires (led by Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry) performed this song at the Grammy Awards in 2016. Dave Grohl introduced the act and said, "I have an ace of spades tattoo but the truth is, Lemmy and Motörhead left their mark on me a long time ago, just as they did for everybody who has ever loved rock and roll. As Lemmy taught us in the song 'Ace of Spades,' the pleasure is to play."



Lemmy was, perhaps, inspired by the tattoo he’d had done in Holland the previous year on his left forearm. It was an ace of spades with, “BORN TO LOSE LIVE TO WIN,” written around it. The carpe diem spirit of the song, indeed of Lemmy, is enshrined in it, and is borne out by the fantastic, irresistible, acapella shout-along halfway through the song: “You know I’m born to lose/And gambling’s for fools/But that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t wanna live forever.”



In later years, Lemmy reckoned he’d “had enough of that song” and also claimed to have sung it as ‘Eight of Spades’ for two years without anyone noticing. “We’ve had quite a few good releases since then,” he remarked dryly in his autobiography. None of the band's very similar singles connected with the public in quite the same way but he told Mojo magazine in 2011, “I never knew it was such a good song… I'm glad we got famous for that rather than for some turkey.” Whatever his thoughts, he would usually play it in concert because the fans loved it.  

Last edited by arabchanter (25/11/2018 9:38 pm)