I stole this idea from Wil Pfeiffer over at X-Ray Spex, except instead of movies, mine will be music, and specifically, 15-ish albums from the same genre. So while this will never be all I listened to in any given month, I'll try to group together things that make sense to group together.
Or, in the case of the below, "sense," because I don't think anyone with much of it would have lined up any of the below for sonic consumption. In some cases as we'll see, that's a shame; in others, well, I can't argue.
What deteriorated my sense and sensibilities for such things was basically sustained consumption of hair metal in the 80s. Something I've spent no small amount of time exploring in these pages. (See here, here, or here, for example.) In addition to all that - and to my nightly dose of Dial MTV, which was ruled by hair metal during this time - from 1987-1990 (probably a little beyond that, actually) I read a lot of stuff like:
"Who's shreddin'? Unh, dude?" was the question (or questions, I guess) that forever drove me to these things. occupied a lot of my mental landscape during those years. I couldn't play guitar worth a damn - still can't, really - but I liked to know who was the month's "hot" guitarist and I argued with people about who was truly the shred king and who was just flash and a big poser.
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| These magazines had many ads that have stuck with me over the years. |
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| But moreso than these were the albums advertised on the inside cover, above. |
I got to thinking about these inside-front-cover albums a few months back and decided to track them down. I only had a vague idea of what I was going for - "80s shred metal that would have been advertised in Guitar Player in 1988" more or less. Each thing led to something else. It was an interesting month. I wouldn't exactly recommend it to anyone - unless of course you spent the same amount of time looking over that front inside cover and thinking about all as I did in the waning years of hair metal.
With regard to this particular hair metal wheelhouse - call it shreddin'/ neoclassical, whatever you like - all my needs were met, then and now, by Joe Satriani, so I never really branched out as I otherwise would have. His music hits all the notes of the genre that appeal to me: intense cinema of the mind, rocking out, great use of his gear, videogame Sonic-type runs, some serene beauty like here or here, rocking out again, sonata form run amok, dreamscape type stuff, atmosphere, atmosphere, and more atmosphere).
I suspect, though - and this is no disrespect to Satriani or anyone, really - it's a first-through-the-door thing. Whomever first formed your impression of the genre is whom you think of as the calibration of the bunch. (Was that ever a name for a metal album, Calibrator? It should have been. Or a ZZ Top album, maybe.) Anyway, mine was Satriani.
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| Still going strong, although shorn of the "hair" part of hair metal these days. (In truth, he never really fit into "hair metal" but hey.) Still rocking that Ibanez - no other guitar embodies the genre quite the same.) |
Was he the high point of the genre? Was it "Mr. Scary" by Dokken? Images and Words by Dream Theater? "Play With Me" by Extreme?" Any/ all of the below? Yaaaaaaaaaaah! You tell me yours after I tell you mine. Let us begin! 15-ish Hair Shreddin' Albums I Listened to in July, alphabetical order, cominatcha'.
1.
Kind of a busy logo, eh? It definitely has that junior high back of your covered textbook sort of feel to it.
Albums Listened To: No Parole from Rock and Roll (1983), Disturbing the Peace (1985), and Dangerous Games (1986).
Alcatrazz was a bizarre band. Best known as a proving ground for two shredders (Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai) who went on to bigger and better things, they were an odd fusion of sensibilities, or perhaps an insensible fusion of sensibilities, is a better way to put it. (The title track from No Parole encompasses all of them. As does the next one. But more on that in a second.) I never listened to them in the 80s, but I knew of them thanks to my old buddy Jay. He let me borrow his copy of Disturbing the Peace so I could make a copy of the lovely little Vai showcase on side 2. (Thanks to Eat 'Em and Smile and the movie Crossroads, I was a huge Vai fan. Other Vai fans might find it interesting to first hear the coda from Flex-Able's "Little Green Men" debuted here on "Wire and Wood".) I don't recall ever listening to the rest of it - or anything else by them - at the time.
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| Primarily the brainchild of Graham Bonnet, one of the most hair metal-y singers of the 80s, which is to say of all time. |
I didn't know what to make of these guys. They were of their era; the confusion I felt listening to it now would not have existed in 1986 or 1987 in my old bedroom with the cassette going. I might not have liked it, but I'd have understood it - this is just what metal did. In 2018, though, I must've did a slow-turn and wtf-face at least a dozen times during Disturbing the Peace alone.
I mean, take this one, "The Stripper." Without clicking on the link, you'd probably get a certain idea of what the song might sound like or what its themes might be. And yet, when you hear it, nothing really adds up. It's not a "surprising" take on the material - well, I suppose it is, literally, quite that. But it's a damn peculiar angle of approach. Or how about "God Blessed Video"? There's a lot of 80s in that video. But moreover... I mean, what? What kind of idea for a song is that? And is that the right way to get at whatever message you're trying to get at? WTF is going on here? Alcatrazz prompted that reaction from me a lot, listening to these. ("Bigfoot," "General Hospital," "Mercy," "Too Young to Die, Too Drunk To Live" - all of them.)
One thing I learned this month: "released only in Japan" "only big in Japan" "moved to Japan in 2000-something" all feature prominently in the bios of ex-neoclassical folks. I guess that's where the shredders of the 20th century (and the Alcatrazzes) all went to die (or live forever) in the 21st.
Two last things: (1) Eddie Kramer must have been blasted out of his ever-loving mind on various substances or pharmaceuticals or both while producing Disturbing the Peace, and (2) on some other level of the Tower, "Ohaya Tokyo" was the theme song for The Drew Carey Show. (That's a play on the chorus and "Ohio" - sorry, kinda lame joke but it made me laugh through several edits of this post, so hey.)
2.
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| (1989) |
Holy moley that cover! Wow. It was the 80s, though - no cheap shots from me. He seems to have done pretty good for himself in the years since. And really, cover aside, which puts it into a very specific section at the record store, this is a perfectly legit album.
I recall there being some kind of "I Have Seen the Future of Metal..."-esque ad campaign around this album, although my memory might be exaggerating it. I never heard it at the time. So, first time impressions in July 2018 were:
- Clocking in at a cool 30:37? Good deal.
- Very much in that Vai/ Satriani tone and production mode. Had I heard this prior to hearing Satriani there's a chance (chronologically incorrect as it would be) I'd call things Saraceno-esque as a descriptor instead of Satriani-esque.
- "Remember When" is pretty cool.
3.
Albums Listened To: Speed Metal Symphony (1987) Go Off! (1988) Jason Becker - Perpetual Burn (1988), Marty Friedman - Dragon's Kiss (1988)
Hey now! Okay, here is the one purchase I actually made from that aforementioned inside-cover of Guitar World. I was 13 in 1987, so this was the age of cutting lawns and such. I remember giving the cash to my Mom and her writing a check to Shrapnel Records. I wish I still had a copy of that check. Anyway, mail order was so magical to me when I was 13 or 14. Internet kids will never understand the same way I'll never understand not having grown up in a party line household or with an outhouse.
Magical mail order reverie aside, I didn't like it much when I was 13 and didn't like it much now. ("Concerto" is pretty good roller-coaster music, maybe. Some awesome amusement park flume ride or something. Or maybe some dingy street fair one - that might fit better, with the threat of electroction or fatal accident or vomit.) I listened to a couple of tracks of Go Off! and nothing really clicked.
As for the axemen of the band, I liked their solo debuts -
a little more but nothing that really grabbed me. Marty Friedman ended up in Megadeth for a fairly long stretch. Jason Becker took Vai's place in the David Lee Roth Band, but ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) sidelined his performing career. He still seems to be releasing music, though, which is good to hear. Marty moved to Japan and has been cranking out music year after year.
4.
Racer X was kind of an awesome name. I remember wanting to hear these guys so bad - and another metal one from the same era, TT Quick, whose Metal of Honor I did own - and crank - back in the day. Unfortunately, these guys didn't do it for me hearing them for the first time in 2018. I had to jettison Street Lethal (1986) about 3/4s of the way through. Second Heat (1987) is an improvement but still a mess. ("Moonage Daydream," wow, though. So wrong. There are some "Yaaaah!" metal-harmonies randomly applied throughout that greatly amuse me, though. I like how they couldn't figure out how to do the flute-stuff in the middle of the song in a metal fashion, so they just omitted it altogether.)
Technical Difficulties, though, isn't a bad little metal album at all. Guess they just needed a couple of warm-ups - can't blame them for that. "17th Moon" is pretty rocking; "Phallic tractor" (!!) likewise. ("Barney's film had heart, but "Phallic Tractor" had a phallic tractor.") Too bad it came out in 1999 and not in the 80s.
5.
There's a lot of cross-over in this genre. Kotzen joined Poison (as did Blues Saraceno at one point), and later he replaced Paul Gilbert (from Racer X) in Mr. Big. He also collaborated with Greg Howe, also a Sharpnel Records signatory, and released all told something like a gazillion records. Good on ya, Mr. Kotzen.
As for these two, they're fun enough. Hit play on this one and you know what to expect. This kind of song takes me back; I associate it with malls and the Dream Machine arcade and summertime. That might not be you; if not, you probably associate it with some far part of town you neither understand nor want to be in. And ditto for "Spider Legs" which reminds me of Ratt, which makes me think this one needs a little Stephen Pearcy. Something few ever have reason to write.
As for Fever Dream (1990), some of the licks and grooves are cool, but the songs/ vocals/ lyrics never quite gel for me. Too many entries in this genre sound like that "Let's Fighting Love" song from South Park to me. But that's not Richie Kotzen's fault.
6.
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| (1982) |
This doesn't quite fit the shredder/neoclassical theme I have going, but I revisited it and wanted to update the official Dog Star Omnibus take on the band. I have previously stated publicly that they are basically the prototype of so much of the decade that followed, sort of a hair metal equivalent of the National Security Action Memo that Oliver Stone purports to have started the Vietnam War in JFK. Listening to it again, though, it made me think it's really only four songs that are this ("Kept Me Coming", "When I'm With You", "Mama Baby", and "Give Me Rock and Roll"); the rest is more or less not so distinguished.
And, really, of those, there were multiple precedents, such as (quite loudly and clearly) Rainbow and Foreigner on "Mama Baby." So, I've got to walk back my earlier accliam. Perfectly fine hair metal from an unfortunately-named band, but the missing link between 70s metal and 80s it is not.
Still, if you wanted to nail down the Hair Metal era as making the most sense between "When I'm With You" when it was released (82) and when it hit number one (89), I'd probably agree.
7.
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| (1983) |
Steeler put out one album - this one - and was fronted by Ron Keel. They had All-Roads-Lead-To-Yngwie for one album (this) before he left for Alcatrazz and before he went solo. Ron Keel is a metal radio guy now, last I checked, but his post-Steeler project was Keel. They had one song ("The Right to Rock.") I can remember seeing on Headbanger's Ball once or twice, but for the most part they, like Steeler, were pretty much unknowns to me in the 80s.
As for this album, or really any album like it, it's the kind of fun-but-terrible record you want to be very careful about showing anyone. Like your favorite conspiracy theory or collection of Chick Tracts, bringing it up in the wrong company will forever exile you to "kook"land in the eyes of those in the room with you. Somewhere down the line even the soundest of your opinions will be tarred by that brush.
Luckily we're among friends here! What could go wrong on the internet?
Anyway, it's really not the greatest album. "Hot on Your Heels" is a shop demonstration of shred guitar, "Serenade" one (that no one really needed) for the metal falsetto. Someday Dog Star Omnibus is going to go to an All-Opera format, and we'll talk about the castrati and the works in the repertoire written for them (or for contra-tenors now, like Philip Glass' Akhenaten.) Until then we have "Serenade."
8.
I enjoyed both Edge of Insanity (1986) and Maximum Security (1987). I should probably stress: these guys were practically teenagers when they did all this stuff. They were on the other side of adolescence than I was, i.e. just leaving it as I was entering it, but for a confused moment we saw each other across a crowded room of Aquanet and dry ice.
"The Witch and the Priest" deserves credit for anticipating how so much 21st century Iron Maiden was going to sound. At least to one man in 1986, it seemed perfectly obvious; good on ya, Tony. "No Place in Time" is not so bad, either; the right movie soundtrack comes along, you got yourself a stew.
I never heard either of these back in the day. I wish I could get my 14 year old self to get wicked into it via time travel suggestion. (Squints... outstretches hand... computer hum... eyeballs vibrating...)
9.
Vandenburg: Vandenburg (1982) and Heading for a Storm (1983)
I can remember some black and white (so it must have been Blast) article I read about Andrian Vandenburg prior to his joining Whitesnake. (Whitesnake? Yep, just looked him up. Apparently he has a band called "Vandenberg's Moonkings" too, which is pretty awesome. The name - no idea about the music. Maybe next July.) -For some reason I always think of these guys as bigger than they were. Blast/ Hit Parader/ Circus had that effect on me. If they were in there, I just sort of assumed they were bigtime. Later, I realized these magazines were written by the bands' publicists. Or while doing lines with them, I have no idea.
Anyway, this was less shred-y and more classic rock-y / Bad Company-y. "Burning Heart" (at least the chorus) is probably the one you'd remember, if any. They go in a more Honeymoon Suite/ Footloose-y direction on Heading for a Storm. "Welcome to the Club" is an acceptable (though nowhere near the glory of) rewrite of "Torpedo Girl" by Kiss.
10.
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| (1985) |
Here's one I never knew back in the day but as I was looking stuff up for all the above I kept seeing their name mentioned so I decided to make them part of the proceedings.
Some straight-up mid-80s power metal here. A little Priest-y here and there. How about that end of "Murder"? Muddy production, some swagger for sure, a wonderful kind of overreach here: very metal. This reminds me a lot of Megadeth actually, or W.A.S.P. I'm kicking myself, by the way, for not including either of those bands in July and even considered cheating to pretend I had just so I could throw some on and ramble on about it. It's taken me so long to type up what I did listen to, though, so hey,
Should've given "March or Die" to Anthrax, though. (Not too late, Anthrax!) Not to spend so much time talking about so many other bands. They're still bringing the metal to the masses in 2018. I don't know any of their other stuff; I'm kind of crap with post-80s metal. (Except Maiden.)
11.
Vinnie Moore: Mind's Eye (1986) Time Odyssey (1988)
Here's the guitarist from the above in two albums I remember reading a lot about in Shredder's Weekly back in the day. (Note: this magazine might not exist.) There's a lot of cool videogame music here. I don't mean to give backhanded compliments. But when I hear things like "Message in a Dream," I want to play some Stun Runner. And Stun Runner was awesome! So for me it's not a bad thing to say, but I don't mean to say it's only that, or to ghettoize it in any fashion.
One thing that comes through quite clear is Vinnie had (has, I guess - he's still out there, having joined UFO in 2003) great tone. Tone is basically the ability to play or sustain a note in a memorable, unbroken way. David Gilmour, Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Gary Moore - just a couple of acclaimed tone guys. There's a cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on here, which affords the listener the chance to admire Clapton's tone over Vinnie's shoulder.
12.
Vinnie Vincent Invasion: Vinnie Vincent Invasion (1986) VVI (1988)
VVI is technically the 2nd Vinnie Vincent Invasion album, but it probably should be considered Slaughter's first album, as many who came before me have pointed out. (Well, "many.") Outside of "Love Kills" (featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pt. 4), the one I remember most is "Dirty Rhythm." I had a total flashback when I was re-acquainted with the couplet "Come together in serenade / pull the pin on my love grenade." Man that makes zero sense. Just none. You can see how the guy got a job with Gene and Paul, though.
And finally:
13.
Yngwie Malmesteen: Rising Force (1984) Live in Leningrad (1989)
"All roads lead to Yngwie," I said to my wife when I was describing this project. "Get me out of this town, then," she said. That cracked me up.
Okay, so here was my 80s timeline with Yngwie Malmsteen:
- My brother had one of those metal compilation albums that had "I See the Light Tonight" on it.
- My buddy Jay - who was a metal Johnny Appleseed of North Smithfield, RI, leaving hair metal cassettes behind him everywhere he went; he was the only person I've ever known who owned the Dudes soundtrack - let me borrow Rising Force (1984). (And Alcatrazz and Racer X now that I think about it. I made a copy and listened to that one an awful lot on the bus in 7th and 8th grade.
- I had Trilogy (1986) and Odyssey (1988) on cassette, as well, but the one I wanted to revisit was Live in Leningrad, which had all the hits from those on it, ("thi-is could be paradise!") so I didn't revisit those.
- 1991-1994: As metal faded from my life (for the time being) every now and again I'd throw on Live in Leningrad. And love it.
"Black Star" is still a pretty awesome slice of the genre to my ears. Anytime the Talib Kweli and Mos Def band has come up I make an Yngwie reference and everyone cringe-hisses. The reaction amuses me. Ah well. In the same way we used to have the Air Drum Band/ Arm Dance Studio at summer camp talent shows, I wish we'd had an air guitar one for this song. Or maybe for the song after it on Rising Force, "Far Beyond the Sun." That's metal air-guitar-face galore right there. Some enterprising young lad or lass needs to make a Bill and Ted montage for that and leave the link in the comments. Please and thank you.
Rest of Rising Force: "Now Your Ships Have Burned" - wtf? "Evil Eye", man I love that fade out; had a genuine time travel moment hearing that again in 2018. "Icarus" is fantastic. The last part of that should've been utilized in a B-80s movie for a chase/ magic cross-cut scene. And still should! My own personal Stranger Things movie has this for the big montage scene where my character pedals home one step ahead of the evil forces unleashed that he and his friends must somehow defeat. "As Above, So Below" - oh man. Terrible. "Lil Savage" / "Farewell" - I forgot about these. Meh. But for the ones I love, such a classic, Essential-McMolo record.
As for Live in Leningrad, man, did I love "You Don't Remember, I'll Never Forget" back in the day. I honestly forgot how much I listened to Live in Leningrad until revisiting this album. In many ways this solo showcase from the album sums up all the good and bad about shred metal and might be a good one to end on.
(I do not endorse clicking that link, unless you have some dishes to do or something. 10 minutes of Yngwie might trigger a The Ring type scenario otherwise.)
(That might go for all of these links - too late now, but just in case. May whatever God you believe in take mercy upon your soul. Yaaaaaaaah!)
~
And with that (sound of book closing shut) we probably won't be back to these waters for some time... join us sometime in September for Albums I Listened To in August (genre: orchestral.) 
