Author Archives: destroyerofharmony

Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Record Vault – The Almighty

The Hot Metal magazine in Australia did a stellar review of the album which got me interested and the cover art was enough to get me to pick it up and stare it for a while, while the track titles sealed the deal.

Ricky Warwick is now the front man of Black Star Riders, but once upon a time he was the front man for a very underrated band called “The Almighty” who are from Scotland. “Soul Destruction” is the second studio album released by Polydor Records. 

“Crucify” kicks the album off with a double kick drum intro which brings back memories of “Overkill” from Motorhead.  Ricky Warwick vocally brings his Brian Johnson style instead of his Phil Lynott voice.

“Free ‘N’ Easy” is one of their best tracks. It should have been the catch cry of the Napster generation with the lyric line, “Everything is so free and easy, everything is so free and wild”.

“Joy Bang One Time” has a riff that reminds of “Psycho Love” from Skid Row, merged with “Welcome To The Jungle” and “My Michelle” from “Appetite For Destruction” and the song is telling you to lose your mind for that joy bang one time. 

“Love Religion” has this swampy delta blues riff to kick it off, which i dig.

“Friends won’t answer your phone call” kicks off the “Bandaged Knees” chorus and at 6 minutes long, it’s not a radio friendly tune, but it got more heart and soul and rock and roll attitude than anything that was doing the charts.

“Little Lost Sometimes” is like “Hey Jude” merged with “Let It Be” merged with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. And at track 8, this seven minute song is buried deep in the album. Press play and allow yourself to get a little lost sometimes.

“Devil’s Toy” is a classic Warwick cut, with “Love, only love, love is the devils toy” being the catch cry.

The song “Soul Destruction” never made it to the album, but there is a demo on YouTube which is raw, full of attitude and the rock and roll spirit. Crank it.

 

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Unsung Heroes

The Record Vault – Anew Revolution

“Rise”came out in 2008.

I downloaded it via a cyber locker like Rapidshare or MegaUpload.

The way cyber lockers worked was;

  • a normal blog site would put up links to the music.
  • The links would refer you to the cyber locker website.
  • You would wait 90 seconds or less for the ads to play and the download link would be made available to you.
  • Eventually the U.S government via the sponsorships of the RIAA and MPAA went after these cloud storage cyber locker sites.

Remember Kim Dotcom from MegaUpload. His house was raided like he was a terrorist in the morning and all because he provided a service to people to store files in the cloud.

A lot of people used these sites to store their photos or work documents and they lost it all when the US Government went after these sites and took possession of their servers.

Anyway, going back to “Rise”. I liked it, so I purchased it. And the below is from a review a did a while back.

Done

You wanna try me you might be the one who goes down
I’ve had it up to here with your rule
You’re such a two face it’s too late to take back those words

We have all dealt with people like this. One thing life has taught me is nothing is forever, and that means relationships.

Nme

I can’t believe I finally see the enemy in you

Yes, that best friend, might scheme and lie. Yes, that great love, might scheme and lie.

Eventually all the lies come down like a house of cards and those people you trusted suddenly become untrustworthy. And it’s hard to take when it first happens. There is anger, a feeling of being wronged and disbelief that it’s happened for so long.

But, humans are resilient and we rise again, better and stronger than before.

Generation

We are the voice of our lives,
But no one’s listening.

Eventually people will listen. It just takes time, effort and commitment. We give up too easily.

And how long, how long,
Can I fake this?

How long can we really fake our lives?

We have so many tools at our disposal to connect with people and we remain even more isolated.

Rise

Hey you
Stand the fuck up and rise
I’m not afraid

It’s pretty simple. Stand up, don’t be afraid. Easier said than done, because of what could come after. Life is always a struggle. People in power versus the ones who work for them. Some abuse the power they have and others are more utopian.

I can’t fake the way I feel inside
Every one of those eyes judging me
It’s funny how things change
I redefine how messed up this life can really be

There was a time when every action and every word that came from me was so thought out because I didn’t want to be judged or questioned for my actions/words. As I got older, I ceased to care about those kind of social arrangements. Life is too short for me to care and there are too many other things I care more about now.

Let Go

There’s history there and no one wants to let go, even though it’s over. The thought of starting over again is too frightening. So you hold on to each other, playing games, blaming each other even more and eventually you both stop trying to save what can’t be saved anymore. So you let go.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Damn Yankees and Tangier

Oh, you young Spotify AI, recommending albums I have heard a hundred times before you were even born, but since, I haven’t listened to em on your service you need to recommend them.

So based on my Sammy Hagar listening a few weeks ago, the AI is telling me I need to check out “Contagious” from Y&T.

However I cannot stream the album in Australia, which is bizarre and why would the AI recommend an album which is unavailable to be played here. And really, would you say that Y&T is similar to Sammy Hagar?

I wouldn’t, but hey, the AI is slowly learning from me, until the time comes when its fully formed killer robotic version takes over the world in “Judgement Day”.

Since there was no “Contagious” to listen to, next up on the AI list of artists similar to Sammy is Damn Yankees. Um, again not similar, however it’s pretty easy to tell that the coders of the AI probably watched “School Of Rock” and that was enough for them to know the family tree of rock music.

When is Spotify going to realise that they need people who know the genre and blog about it, to tell them how it is done and how to make connections?

Anyway, Damn Yankees released one hell of good rock album in 1990. The brainchild of John Kalodner, it worked musically for two rocking albums. You take a piece of Styx, a piece of Night Ranger and a whole lot of Ted Nugent and you get the big bang, because no one really knew how it would end up. Well two plus million in sales is how it ended up.

“Coming Of Age” rocks straight out of the gate, and the Nuge delivers a stellar pentatonic lead break. The lyrics of a little sister, hitting the stage and coming of age didn’t do it for me, but hey rock and roll was never about making sense.

“Bad Reputation” in the first 30 seconds starts off with a power chord groove which gets me hooked, then the single note riff gets the foot tapping, before it goes into a clean tone bass groove for the verse, which reminds of Def Leppard. It’s a keeper.

“High Enough” has a cool minor key verse and a vocal melody which is memorable.

The song “Damn Yankees” could have appeared on a Guns N Roses album.

“Come Again” is one of those songs that stands out, moving between power ballad and rocker, with great vocals and a melody which sticks around long after the song has finished. And that lead break from the Nuge, is one of his best, by far. It’s a pretty big reason why I press repeat on the song. Plus you get a bonus outro lead break as well.

“Rock City” is “Turbo Lover” re-incarnated and I dig it. It’s also a blast to play on the guitar. And those G string tearing bends and whammy dives from the Nuge are huge. After the solo break, he plays a staccato lick that reminds me of John Sykes (Children Of The Night) and Jake E Lee (Waiting For Darkness).

And “Piledriver” could have ended up on a Van Halen album with Sammy singing. Maybe that is the connection. I doubt it.

Next up, the AI is telling me artists similar to Hurricane. And the two that caught my attention are Tangier and their album “Four Winds” and “Up From The Ashes” from Dokken.

Now Tangier was more Lynyrd Skynyrd merged with Bad Company than hair rock or hair metal, but hey, the record label and magazines decided, the band was a hair band and it got promoted as such. Hence the connection to “Hurricane”. And when I got this album on LP, I spun it regularly.

“On The Line” is Tangier’s best song. There is a familiarity to it, the melody is strong and the music rocks and wails when it needs to. The lyrics paint a picture of meeting your end walking the streets at night, and it was never going to break the charts, but, hey, music was never meant to chart.

“Four Winds” is worthy of a title track and the opening lyric of feeling a cold wind blowing and how it tells a tale of a thousand years still connects. If only nature could talk, what stories it would have to spin.

“Fever For Gold” could have come from a Bad Company album and “Southbound Train” continues that Lynyrd Skynyrd merged with Bad Company vibe and I was always wondering the destination of the southbound train. Since South is down, I guess the promised land for Tangier is hell. Nice touch, I must say.

And “Sweet Surrender” feels like it came from a 1972 album, or maybe it’s the similarity to “Tie Your Mother Down” in the riff which gets me, or the harmony leads after the Chorus that sound like they came from a Sweet record.

“Bad Girl” has this repeating lick which grabs you by the throat and drowns you in the swamp it was created in.

Finally, the highly anticipated, expensive and delayed solo album from Don Dokken comes up on my home page as an album I need to play, however it is not available to be played in Australia. The algorithm again doesn’t even know that. Anyway a big missed opportunity by Geffen and Don Dokken to earn some extra cents. Then again since the masters of this recording got burned, who knows what copy of the album is available.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Gaming The Charts and Losing The Masters

Any person involved within the recording industry and the music industry overall, is looking to make money from the hard work of an artist. Especially an artist who has tunes which make some coin.

And the record labels, well they are even looking at making money in any way they can for doing even less then what they did before.

I’m not sure if people have realised, but depending on the artist, there is a high chance that you might have purchased a concert ticket which included a free download of the most recent album of the artist. You see, artists and the labels alike, still think the charts matter and that a platinum record hanging up on someone’s wall is super important.

Bon Jovi and Metallica are two artists that come to mind quickly who have done ticket/album bundles.

And concert promoters don’t like these bundles. The fan is unable to say no, and since the price of the concert ticket looks to be the same, they are thinking free album.

But ticket pricing is a tough gig. If the price is too low, the show sells out and the scalpers along with the reselling market make the money because of the demand.

If the price is too high, then the show is at risk of not selling out and the money lost is carried by the promoter who is taking the risk. And when it comes to bundles, the labels just want the promoters to add extra dollars to the tickets. But, if the promoters thought the tickets would sell for $5 more, the tickets would be sold at that price.

So the $5 album charge comes out as a tax against the show takings. If you are like Bon Jovi and you get 20,000 people to your show, the show’s takings will need to pay $100K to the record label. Do 30 shows in the tour with the same numbers and that’s $3 million, the record labels get and as a byproduct the artist gets a platinum record on their wall.

And the label didn’t spend a cent on marketing but still made a cool $3 million in album sales, because of the hard work done by others on the road.

So if the money comes out of the concert takings, who is actually paying for the albums. Basically, the cost is absorbed by the artists , who are actually buying their own albums.

There is a great blog post over at Bob Lefsetz about it.

Then you have the pop artists who have all agreed to have T-Shirt and Album bundles, beanie and album bundles and so forth. If you don’t, believe me, check out the story over at the NY Times.

Gaming the system, are they….

The article states that from the 39 album releases that went to number 1 with a bullet last year, half of them had a concert ticket or clothing bundle attached to the sale. One artist, sold album bundles with key chains, hats and tickets. Another artist had the album bundled with energy drinks.

Bon Jovi is also mentioned in the story, about how their 12 month old album returned to the top of the charts in 2018 because of a concert ticket/album bundle and how the following week it more or less disappeared from the charts.

And maybe if the record labels cared about keeping the masters of some of the best music safe instead of gaming the system, the masters of some of the most popular recordings wouldn’t be lost.

Universal Music didn’t care enough to keep the masters of the recordings safe, and they got destroyed in a fire. I suppose the New York Times article, “The Day The Music Burned” sums it all up.

And talk about a cover up.

The fire happened in 2008 and finally, we are getting to hear about the lost Vault recordings. Even the acts weren’t aware. Acts like Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Cat Stevens, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, the Eagles, Don Henley, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Iggy Pop, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, R.E.M., Sonic Youth, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole, Beck, Sheryl Crow and Eminem.

From reading the articles, it looks like any artist who released on Geffen Records, has no original masters, unless the artist had never handed the master tapes over to the label or took the masters back at a particular point in time. When you look at hard rock and heavy metal, we are talking about big artists like Guns N Roses, Whitesnake and Aerosmith who had released career defining albums on Geffen. Add to that list acts like Y&T, Pride and Glory, Blue Murder, Black N Blue, Galactic Cowboys, Asia, Coverdale/Page, Nelson, Salty Dog, Tesla, Sammy Hagar, Tyketto and Junkyard.

So are all the remastered editions coming out recently, really remastered from the original source tapes. Because Universal hasn’t come clean on what has been lost. And when artists were questioned on Twitter by their fans, if their masters were safe, they either answered “no” or “I don’t know”.

But hey, piracy is still the issue.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Twisted Sister and Slaughter

“Love Is For Suckers” was released in 1987. It was meant to be Dee Snider’s first solo album. Instead it was the final Twisted Sister album.

Twisted Sister had released three career defining albums in “Under The Blade”, “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” and “Stay Hungry”. Then came “Come Out And Play” and it didn’t do as well as “Stay Hungry” however that didn’t mean it was a shit album.

But hey, when something doesn’t meet the sales expectations, someone needs to be blamed. The tour also had a lot of cancellations and half empty arenas.

One of my favourite songs is “Wake Up (The Sleeping Giant)”. A simple riff in the key of Am kicks off the song before it morphs into an A5 Power Chord groove like Acca Dacca.

Who the hell are they to say
What we can do and how we can play

Anyone who has the money or the power or the authority, will always be looking to control others. It happens at home, in school, in the workplace and in society. Even in your friends circle you will have someone who is like a pseudo leader.

We got the numbers, yeah,
We got the might
We got the strength and
We got the right
We got the reason, yeah,
We got the night
So wake up the sleeping giant

I always saw the WE in the song, as the metal heads.

But by 1987, we had woken up and we needed something else lyrically. We had been hearing this same message for the last 6 years. Metallica nailed it a year later when they released an album about the corruption in the justice system. Black Sabbath Ozzy era came back into the public conversation because we liked to “smoke the sky” and there’s no better song for it then “Sweat Leaf”. Motley Corabi Crue wrote a killer track as well in 1994 called “Smoke The Sky”.

It’s our rights they’re abusing,
It’s our right to fight back
So rally the troops and
Let’s start the attack

It’s the war cry against the censorship that was taking place against heavy metal music. But the troops weren’t sure if they wanted to commit. A troop who was a rebel in 1983 and wasn’t gonna take it, had now graduated and is in college and are on their way to becoming part of the degree factory and another stat in the workforce.

“Tonight”, “Me And The Boys” with its “Summer Of 69” style riff and “Love Is For Suckers” are all strong songs.

“Hot Love” and “Yeah Right” are also cool and they round out the quality of the album for me.

The album had “Slippery When Wet” from Bon Jovi, “Girls Girls Girls” from Motley Crue, and “Whitesnake 1987” to compete against. All of those albums were in the Billboard Top 10. “Look What the Cat Dragged In” from Poison was just outside at number 13. “5150” was doing great business and “The Final Countdown” was also setting charts alight. To top it off, two 87 releases were slowly percolating lower down the charts getting ready to break through. Those albums being “Appetite For Destruction” and “Hysteria”.

Basically, a lot of competition for people’s ears and minds.

Going into 1995, Slaughter went from platinum darlings in 1992, to a band without a label. Their label Chrysalis Records was taken over by EMI and EMI didn’t have room for Slaughter.

How things change in three years?

The band also had issues within. Guitarist Tim Kelly was arrested on drug trafficking charges and had a legal mess up until 1997. A year later he would tragically die in a traffic accident. Main co-songwriter and bassist Dana Strum also injured his hand in a motorcycle accident so that delayed the writing and recording.

Lucky for the band a new label called CMC International was formed in 1991 and all they wanted to sign was hard rock and heavy metal artists.

So in 1995, Slaughter finally released “Fear No Evil” and no one even knew or cared. This is what its like when the record label doesn’t know how to compete in the current market place. Just because Grunge and Industrial Metal became mainstream it didn’t mean that hard rock and classic heavy metal had no audience. But the labels had no idea who and where the audience was. Most record shops would promote what was popular and only the ones who specialize in genres would have the rock and metal and even those stores would promote what was popular.

“Live Like There’s No Tomorrow” kicks off with an “Immigrant Song” vibe and wail, and you need to check out the solo section. And if you’re looking for a ballad like Slaughter, the opening track delivers a blistering speed metal song which I class as one of Slaughter’s best.

“Keep lookin’ forward don’t ever look back”, is one of the lines which stood out. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Mark Slaughter was thinking of Tim Kelly when he wrote the lines, “you’re livin’ everyday of your life like there’s no tomorrow”.

“Hard Times” is another song which is ignored but it shouldn’t be. Just press play to hear the intro riff which reminds me of “The Headless Cross” from Black Sabbath.

It also has cool lyrics like “so now you learn from the concrete and pavement, it’s hard to see through city lies” and those lines connected. Because failing leads to growth and the city lies shows how people are always scheming to get ahead to the detriment of others.

“Prelude / Outta My Head” is a great combination of an acoustical piece leading into a rocking track. These two songs wouldn’t light up the charts but they would become fan favorites. The riff is good and the lead break is excellent but the lyrics didn’t match the excellence.

“Unknown Destination” has a lead section which I dig and the lyrics about travellers from the East who don’t know where they’ll be tomorrow captures the gypsy life and maybe we all should be doing a bit of that. Instead we get up and get to our first destination, the office and then get to our next destination, home. In between, there will be other destinations like school drop off or pick up and getting some groceries from food outlets.

Anyway the messages I get from the two albums is don’t let people in power abuse your rights and don’t be afraid to fail, because if you want to live your life like no tomorrow you need to feel the concrete and pavement.

And both artists felt the concrete and pavement a few times in their careers.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

XYZ and Danger Danger

I’ve got both XYZ albums on LP. Well, I got the debut because Don Dokken was producing and I liked it, so I got the next one a few years after it came out, which by then, I think the band was already broken up, because hey, hair bands didn’t warrant call backs from the label suits anymore. And the majority of the magazines didn’t report on the progress of bands who weren’t popular anymore.

“Hungry” was released in 1991 and recently it has been coming up on my Spotify home page as an album I should play, based on my past listening, because up until today, I haven’t played it on Spotify at all. Well, Mr Algorithm, I guess it’s your luck day as I’m pressing play.

One thing that stood out for me for about XYZ is the music. I liked it, I could relate to it and I even wrote riffs similar to it. And the lead breaks rocked and shredded and wailed when they needed to.

But music is a business and record labels want to make money at an exponential rate. So the labels got producers to work with bands and that work involved making the band sound like other bands, especially the singers.

At one point in time, I couldn’t tell the difference between Tangier, Babylon A.D, XYZ, Danger Danger, Hericane Alice, XYZ and Roxy Blue. To even prove my point, I did a mix tape of songs from all their albums that had a similar vocal style, and even though side one had seven different artists, it all sounded like an album from just ONE artist. Maybe a future blogpost right here.

Anyway, I digress. Let’s get back to XYZ.

The best song on the album is “Off To The Sun”. The feel of this song is epic, reminding me of the 70’s artists, it’s also very Dio like in the vocals, the music is excellent and the lead break from Marc Diglio is the stuff of guitar heroes. Another great guitar player who is virtually unknown.

“Face Down In The Gutter”, “Don’t Say No” and “When The Night Comes Down” contain great riffage and music overall plus the lead breaks from Marc Diglio is the stuff of guitar heroes.

“I’ve got JD eyes so I don’t need to see, to know I have landed where I wanted to be” is from “Face Down In The Gutter”. If the lyric didn’t connect with people, then they obviously don’t drink and there was a time in my life I didn’t trust anyone who didn’t drink. Anyway, who hasn’t tried to drown their sorrows in a bottle of whiskey.

The next best song is “The Sun Also Rises In Hell”. Great title and it’s basically a speed metal song that Helloween would be proud of, hell even Dokken wrote similar songs like “Till The Living End” and “Lightning Strikes Again”. Actually, this song does have elements of the Dokken songs and like all of the other songs, it has another unbelievable guitar solo from Marc Siglio.

The self-titled debut from Danger Danger was up next, again another recommendation from Mr Algorithm.

I have it on LP and I must say, I like this album and the guitar playing from Tony “Bruno” Rey (Saraya guitarist) on tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 and Andy Timmons on tracks 3 and 7.

Along with Marc Soligo mentioned above and Bill Leverty from Firehouse, these guys could take a stock chord progression and make it sound exciting. And when it came time to shine, they sure knew how to make that moment great. In relation to Tony Rey, you really need to hear the work he did with Saraya. Great song writing, great playing and killer leads.

Also, all of these guys merged so many different styles like EVH tapping, Malmsteen sweeps, Bratta melodicism, Rhoads modal style of writing, Sykes Pentatonic lines and whatever blues artist influenced them into a cohesive, melodic, rocky, metally style.

“Naughty Naughty” and  “Under The Gun” is a tickling melodic one two combination punch. It’s not a hard punch like “Blackened” and “Justice For All” from Metallica but a playful punch.

My more metal mates couldn’t understand how I could sit down to learn “And Justice For All” and “Under The Gun” in the same sitting. To them, it was sacrilegious to like Danger Danger and Metallica. Hell, even James Hetfield fostered this attitude, as he had a guitar that said “Kill Bon Jovi” on it. To me, I was one of those fans of the early 80’s who liked metal and rock before the crowd splintered into the different genres made up by the record label marketing teams. So as long as it got my head moving, my foot tapping, I was in.

Going back to Hetfield, he was a rebel and we connected with him. He had his acne problems (we all had similar problems) which is why he started to grow his beard and goatee and he wasn’t a pretty boy, even though Lars probably wanted the band to become cultural stylists, which he finally did with the “Load” albums.

And Hetfield put his views out. He laid into Lars for his drumming, he spoke his mind in interviews and even “the Kill Bon Jovi” writing on his guitar was a viewpoint at the commercialism of music. But money trumps everything, and it changes everything. Even James Hetfield.

Anyway, I digress again. Back to Danger Danger.

“Saturday Nite” takes “Blackout” from Scorpions and makes it even more mainstream. It sounds like a million other songs about getting out and partying on a Saturday night, but if you haven’t heard any of those, well then this one sounds original.

“Don’t Walk Away” is one of my favourite tracks. Maybe because it sounds like “Hysteria”. Maybe because of the way Rey decorates the stock chord progression with little guitar licks and motifs here and there. Maybe because of the guitar solo, and when it all comes together, it sounds great.

“Bang Bang” is a dumb song lyrically. The only saving grace is the lead break from Rey and the vocal melody. All they need is better words. “Rock America” could have been on a Bruce Springsteen album, or even a Night Ranger album. Even though the song is a good listen, and it has a “be who you want to be, this is your life” message, by 1989, America had been rocked for nearly 8 years, and it was looking for a different rock. Then again, it didn’t stop me from listening to this song over and over again. And the lead break from Timmons is excellent.  

“Boys Will Be Boys” was a single, but it didn’t connect with me as the lyrics were crap. By 1989, most boys were “smoking the sky” as Corabi sang in the self-tilted Motley Crue album a few years later, and doing the rattlesnake shake at home and hoping that the girls wanted to have fun with them, because the boys didn’t have the balls to make the move.

In “Live It Up”, Bruno Ravel and Steve West tell us if we work hard from 9 to 5, the tax man will leave us with just enough to survive, but we shouldn’t worry about that, we got to live it up.

So what’s the message today from these two bands. Live it up, be who you want to be and if that’s not enough, that JD bottle is waiting to be consumed.

Enjoy.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Kingdom Come and White Lion

“In Your Face” is a better album than the debut, but it didn’t do nowhere near the same business in sales. It gets me thinking how a lot of the bands who got platinum sales couldn’t back it up a few years later.

Maybe that whole payola deal the labels got done for, played a part in getting acts “fake” sales. Maybe it was too much Kingdom Come saturation (as this album came out a year after the debut) or the stupid interviews they did, denying they even knew who Led Zep was.

Those years of 1986 to 1989 are also those magical years of when hard rock and metal took over the mainstream, which all began in 1983.

The opening track “Do You Like It” is asking me if I like the fire of rock and roll burning out of control and I couldn’t get enough of it. So I went into the next track and “Who Do You Love” comes up next, a combination between Euro Pop and British Rock.

“The Wind” is a classic track, combining AC/DC (intro and chorus) with Led Zep (verses) and Lenny Wolf’s unique Euro pop sensibilities crossed with Robert Plant. And the wind was going to blow regardless if you wanted it too. And that place in time, the paradise you had is gone as quickly as it began, like the careers of many bands classed as “hair bands”.

“Gotta Go (Cant Wage A War)” talks about a red sky and the sound of guns bringing pain and bloody rain in a war a person is fighting in but they don’t know why.

“Highway 6” starts off as this country bluegrass twangy song, before it morphs into a fast rocker and for some reason I feel like I am listening to the Joe Lynn Turner version of Rainbow.

The lyric line “I lost a friend of mine who took the road, he felt the world had turned and left him cold” remains with me.

More so today than ever in the history of human existence, do people feel left out in the cold. They go to social media to see people enjoying what they don’t have and then they try to mimic that enjoyment themselves, all in a fools game to be like someone else.

“Perfect O” is pretty self-explanatory and “Just Like A Wild Rose” is all bluesy Led Zep in the verse, but when the Chorus kicks in, its brilliant.

And the lyric line of how the storm comes and goes slow, she will love him and go, just like a wild rose works.

“Overrated” sounds like it came from the pubs of Australia. “Mean Dirty Joe” has excellent music, an excellent vocal melody but terrible lyrics and a terrible title.

Finally the piece d resistance is “Stargazer” (I even did a whole blog post just on the song) and Lenny questioning, is there something more when it comes time to meet our maker.

“Big Game” from White Lion came out the same year, and it didn’t sell as much as “Pride” so the band went on the defensive and said that the label made them rush an album to capitalise on the success of “Pride”. To me, sales define if the album reached critical mass, however it doesn’t define the quality of the work.

While Kingdom Come sang about “Mean Dirty Joe” and a “Perfect O” in some songs, White Lion (and many say to their detriment) sang about Greenpeace, apartheid and domestic violence.

So “Big Game” is a big record with a big statement and it’s still relevant today than anything that appeared on “Pride” except for “When The Children Cry” and “Lady In The Valley”.

From the opening major key intro of “Goin Home Tonight” I felt part of the vinyl grooves. And “Dirty Woman” has music which is excellent, but the lyrics and the title let it down.

The piece d resistance in this case is “Little Fighter” and like the message in the song, every single soul who has been wronged, broken, abused or knocked down, has to rise again and show the world who they really are. If Mike Tramp never told anyone it was about the sinking of the “Rainbow Warrior” Greenpeace boat, it would have been the hit that made the album. And the message is still relevant today, but since we are surrounded by echo chambers, the rising up part is happening on all sides of left and right and centre whether you like it or not.

“Broken Home” doesn’t need explaining, except how good is the music from Bratta.

But like all 80’s hard rock acts, they kept on moving between subject matter about loneliness, broken homes, saving the planet to relationships and dirty women. And I struggled taking bands seriously when they moved between so many different topics lyrically. “Baby Be Mine” is a perfect example of great music, great guitar playing and terrible lyrics and a terrible title.

But when they go to “Living On The Edge” they nail it again. The lyrics resonate straight away. I had a pair of 501 blue jeans that had seen better days, and who didn’t want to pack their bags and ride into the sunset once upon a time. Then again, these days, kids want to live with their parents, and stay comfortable. And how many people graduated with degrees, but couldn’t get jobs for what they studied for.

“Hot For Teacher” got a re-write in “Let’s Get Crazy”. And I can live with this song and the lyrics, because it’s got a cool party vibe, a lot better than “Dirty Woman” and “Baby Be Mine”.

I can also live with “Don’t Say It’s Over” as a cool relationship gone sour song, and a guitar solo which needs to be heard. “If My Mind Is Evil” has one of my favourite riffs and vocal melodies to match, along with a guitar solo which is a song in its own right. But those lyrics are just dumb, dumb, dumb.

“Radar Love” as a White Lion song works perfectly and “Cry For Freedom” is brilliant and effective in its simplicity.

After the sales didn’t meet expectations, the band told the label to give them time and let them make the album they want. They did that with “Mane Attraction” and it didn’t even make a commercial dent, and the band splintered and when they walked away from each other, no one from the label called to see what happened.  

So the message for the day, from Kingdom Come and White Lion is “Life is short, so keep getting back up when relationships go bad or the family dynamic breaks down and don’t let people get the better of you and take away the freedom you have. Always test yourself with new horizons because when it’s time to meet your maker, you are out of time”.

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