Five Albums You Never Heard That You Should... Jerkface!

I’m an album guy.  A great song is a great song but a great album is a life changer.  If you have AC/DC’s You Shook Me in your mp3 player but have never heard the album Back In Black from beginning to end I can comfortably say your life has been a waste up to this point.  A great album has a flow.  It is littered with peaks and valleys.  It takes you on a journey.  Be it a concept album like Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime or just the perfect sequence of sleazy rock like Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction a great album is more than the sum of its parts. The songs by themselves suffer without the bookends of the album it’s from.  The idea of cherry picking a song off an album like Pink Floyd’s the wall is retarded.

There are plenty of iconic classic albums in every genre.  But to the more sophisticated ear there are also great albums with less of an iconic status.  Often times these hidden gems aren’t given a chance because they break the stereotype of what we perceive a given band to be.  For many the name Black Sabbath instantly conjures up the image of Ozzy.  And when people think of KISS they aren’t likely to think of dark brooding lyrics about emotions.  But why let our own preconceptions rob us of an enjoyable experience?

So I came up with 5 albums that you probably haven’t listened to but definitely should.  For this category I limited myself to bands that have at least one all time iconic masterpiece you must have sex with your hand at least once while listening to before you die album.  The reason being there are soooo many bands you’ve never heard of who have released brilliant records.  It would be difficult to limit myself to 5.  Also the albums I picked were all critical and commercial flops. 

Black Sabbath – Eternal Idol.  As much as Ozzy leaving left the future of Sabbath in the air, it was really Dio’s departure that started roller coaster that became Sabbath in the 80's.  I had a hard time choosing between this record and 1983’s Born Again.  The fact that I’m not sure there is a more obscure record by a band on this list made me go with Eternal Idol.  After being forced by Warner Bros. to release his solo album Seventh Star under the moniker of Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi thought the next album should be more Sabbath-y.  And man did he come through.  This album is loaded with riffs straight off of Lucifer’s taint.  You can actually feel the devil stealing your soul while listening to this record.  It is the first Sab album to feature Tony Martin on vocals and it's the best.  Sadly by this point Sabbath was largely viewed as a real life Spinal Tap.  Tony Martin was at least the fourth singer since Ian Gillan left in 1983 and of those four only two managed to make a record.  One’s that were released anyway.  This heaping slab of metal holds its own with ANY Sabbath record.   Key tracks:  The Shining, Nightmare and The Eternal Idol    

 

Guns N Roses – Chinese Democracy.  This album is to rock as the Hughes H4 Hercules is to aviation.  Rumors circulating for over a decade.  A guitarist recording his parts in a make shift chicken coop.  Talk that there was actually no usable music.  Axl Rose had gone Brian Wilson and was just madly whittling away.  It became a term one would use to describe something that would never be completed.  By the time it was released it was largely ignored because people who would’ve cared were now 13 years older and had kids and mortgages and shit like that.  Which is too bad because it’s a brilliant album.  And of course many were turned off by the idea that a band that only featured Axl Rose was calling itself Guns N Roses.  But the record really delivers.  Today we confuse polished production as teen pop recorded with generic presets that make everything stay in time and sound in key.  Chinese Democracy is about as produced a record as you can find.  It’s slick production is actually part of its brilliance.  You can hear each note being recorded.  No matter how good the music or production is this record will never get a fair shake and that’s too bad because if you haven’t given this record an open ear then you are really missing out.  Key Tracks:  Chinese Democracy, If The World and Sorry   

 

KISS – Carnival Of Souls.  Rocking all nite after partying every day takes its toll on you after 20 years.  Right smack in the middle of grunge’s brief dominance KISS made a cash grab and called it Carnival Of Souls.  They hired grunge guru Toby Wright to produce, tuned down their guitars and started writings songs about their dead friends and being so filled with hate they have actually become the embodiment of it.  This was clearly an example of a band who needs a mirror to see their greatest days taking a stab doing what the newer and cooler kids were doing.  To be fair, the grunge movement offered KISS their first taste of mainstream acceptance.  Whereas in the 80’s KISS’ contemporaries’ found it “un-cool” to have been influenced by KISS, grunge seemed to contain at least one proud member of the KISS Army.  That said they were dangerously close to becoming a club band in 1995 so they made a run at doing the music that was popular at the time.  It's not classic KISS.  But it’s fucking awesome.  They may have been faking it to an extent but what they came up with is a great album.  The only miscue was letting Bruce Kulick sing a song.  Also, hindering any chance people would ever hear this record, KISS shelved it before its release to reunite with original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and embark on a make-up slathered reunion tour.  When they finally dumped this on the public a couple years later they didn’t even bother putting a real album cover on it.  Too bad though.  Cause it kicks ass.  Key Tracks: Childhoods End, I Will Be There and Master & Slave     

Judas Priest – Turbo.  At least now it’s ok to call this album gay.  After a decade of defining what Heavy Metal meant and releasing back to back monstrous metal masterpieces with Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders of The Faith Judas Priest decided to take a stab at using synthesizers.  Which of course made most of their fans commit suicide.  I get how some view this as a betrayal on the level of Metallica cutting their hair but take a moment and listen to the record.  It’s really fucking good.  I suppose Rob Halford could sing the obituary section and it would sound metal but this record has some great music on it.  Sure it’s a little slicker than you expect from Priest but so what.  Metal guys are too touchy about shit like this.  Quit eating that hot dog sideways Beavis and just listen without prejudice.  Key tracks:  Turbo Lover, Locked In and Out In The Cold    

Han Halen – 3.  If Van Halen had a red headed step child its name would be 3.  Before we knew Eddie was the one who was bat shit nuts and not those crazy singers, he kicked Sammy Hagar out of the band because Sammy wasn’t enough of a team player to leave his wife’s side hours after welcoming a child into the world to help pick tracks for a greatest hits album.  He filled Sammy’s spot in the band with perfectly capable Gary Cherone known mostly for his work with Van Halen clone Extreme.  Pretty much hated before its release Van Halen 3 never had a chance.  It’s the little record that couldn’t.  Eddie was forced to reunite with Dave, then Sammy and then Dave again.  The lack of “nice things” said about this record must’ve taken its toll on Eddie as aside from scoring a porno, he hasn’t released any “new” material since.  But this record is good.  It’s at least as good as its predecessor Balance.  If not great.  I promise.  There is some great music on here.  And the record just flows.  But you don’t care do you.  You just got Van Halen all figured out don’t you.  (Insert whiny voice) “Oh.  I didn’t know that was Gary Cherone singing.  I don’t like because I’m a fucking cunt wad with no taste.”   This record and Chinese Democracy are the two records I can’t seem to find or convince anyone of their brilliance.  Two words.  Your loss.  Key tracks:  One I Want, Dirty Water Dog and Ballot or the Bullet. 

Perception.  Lack of promotion.  A change in the music scene.  The bottom line is don’t let something like who’s in a band make it so you miss out on an otherwise great album.  Unless that guy is Myles Kennedy then by all means.  That guys voice just makes me want to peel the skin off my penis.  What are you thinking Slash?    

God of Thunder Thighs

“Even the best chicks can only last a couple of hours.”

I was years away from my first sexual experience when I first read that quote from David Lee Roth.  Yet despite my inability to truly comprehend what he was saying, something about that comment resonated with me.  That comment and the ability to come up with it seemed to embody everything I wanted to be.  In my pre-pubescent brain, it was quite possibly the coolest thing to say.  It oozed with confidence and dripped a sexual overtone that came with being a rock God.  That was before he became a caricature or a punch line to some lame 80’s rock joke.  No sir.  This was Diamond Dave in all his high kicking, spandex sporting Rock God glory.  And everything I wanted to be. 

As much as I found myself in awe of the bands I saw in Hit Parader and MTV, I was never star struck.  What I felt was more like desperate separation.  Like “If these guys only knew me, we’d be best friends.  I’d be the one dorky teenager they’d want to hang out with.”  I longed to be part of something out of my reach and I was frustrated.  I saw my surroundings as something I couldn’t put behind me quick enough.  I was a boy out of place.  An rock n roll astronaut stuck on earth.  A devil in the church.  I looked at rocker’s like Diamond Dave and dreamed of what it would be like to be them.      

But that’s just it isn’t it?  When you’re 15, rock stars seem ageless.  Old enough to do all the cool shit but not old like your stupid parents.  Parents are lame.  They eat three meals a day and go to church every Sunday.  Fuck that.  Do you think David Lee Roth is worried about the 4 food groups?  There’s no way Gene Simmons has ever gone to church.  He was born evil.  Right?  Or so I thought anyway.

I'll clean your chimney after this song

Ah but 25 years later things have changed.  Gene Simmons is just an old Jewish man who’s gotten a bit fat. And Diamond Dave?  More like Dingbat Dave.  He’s just an old man.  He isn’t even kind of cool.  He’s a hokey vaudevillian type.  A Vegas act and a cheap one.  In fact both Gene and Dave have taken their talents to Vegas.  Turns out, they were never as cool as I once thought they were.  In reality nobody is.  Cool is façade.  Cool is an illusion.  An outfit.  Shoes and makeup.  Lighting and cheap fabric.  Behind those serious faces of musicians who glamorized binge drinking and groupie sex were guys running on treadmills and avoiding alcohol to preserve their voices while making sure their tour riders included plenty of fresh fruit.  Lyrical reference’s to drugs and neck tattoo’s portray an image that often masks reality.  (Insert Buckcherry reference here) 

Ok so not all of them were healthy eating monogamous phonies but plenty of them are.  And I find it interesting the way our rockers age.   You can tell how successful a musician was and how relevant they still are by the way they look.  If you ran into Chuck Billy and James Hetfield at a San Francisco bar in 1988, you wouldn’t see the stark difference in appearance you do now.  Chuck Billy looks like he ate himself while Mr. Hetfield has on a pair of jeans and a t shirt that combined probably cost more than Chuck’s monthly rent on his apartment. 

Chuck Billy. Living the Dream

By 1992 Metallica were beginning their run as the biggest rock band on the planet while Testament was already into the downside of their career cycle.  20 years later they are both still going.  Only one of them strong.  When Metallica fly’s their private plane to their next show, I don’t think the in flight meal is Big Mac’s and Dilly bars.  And when Testament is playing some 400 seat club in New Mexico, I doubt their rider has top end, low fat catering.  More like 6 tombstones and a case of diet coke.  Look at current pictures of U2, Metallica, and and compare them to current pictures of bands like Testament and Exodus.  You can tell who’s staying in the better hotel’s. 

Alas we all age.  Some better than others.  But Rock Gods are supposed to stay golden.  Finding out they don’t is like discovering the whole Santa Claus cover up.      

God Of Thunder Thighs

The silver lining of course is that when it mattered to me, the illusion worked.  When I was popping pimples and jerking off 7 times a day, it all seemed so real.  So awesome.  So cool.  Right around the time I realized most of the musicians I inspired to be were either horribly boring or just horrible people, I no longer cared.  And for some reason, I didn’t feel betrayed.  I look back with fondness at the way dreaming of Rock Stardom made me feel.  And while it can never be the same I miss it.  There is a small window of time where horror movies are something you can watch and find scary.  And if you never watch horror movies during that time you will never know that feeling.  That same sentiment is why I don’t feel like I was lied to.  The feeling I had was real.  And that is what really matters.