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Judas Priest – Live at Hammersmith

May 25, 2012 by every record tells a story

Hammersmith Odeon 1989 Ram it Down Tour

When I think of all the metal bands this country has produced, my absolute favourite is Judas Priest. And they are very metal. They sing about metal. Metal Meltdown. Metal Gods. The former is about a metal meltdown. The latter is about, well, metal gods. You can even hear the metal gods’ footsteps during the song – something they created rather wonderfully by banging a cutlery draw up and down on a kitchen work surface.

Live at Hammersmith 1989 close up

They even invented a new word: “Desolisating” – in the song Rapid Fire which is probably my favourite word ever, and is something you do to curses, according to the song. Like many made up words, I come back to it interfrastically. I’m anaspeptic, thrasmotic, even compunctuous to have heard such pericombobulations about it.

Judas Priest Hammersmith 1989

The photos that accompany this eulogy were taken by me on 14th June 1989 and have sat in a photo album ever since. I had a front row ticket to see Judas Priest at The Hammersmith Odeon (now Apollo) for the Ram It Down tour, and I risked taking my new Pentax pocket zoom, sneaking it past the door undetected. They were pretty sniffy about that sort of thing back in the day before phone cameras made the whole camera confiscation thing a logistical impossibility.

Hammersmith Rob Halford KK Downing Glen Tipton 1989

The seat was slightly to the side of the stage, which meant I spent the entire gig looking to my left, right in front of a searingly loud Marshall Stack which had been turned up to at least eleven, if not ‘one’ more. As a consequence, my right ear took the pounding of its life and I spent the next day as deaf as a teenager being asked to tidy his room. When I see Chris Martin‘s tinnitus campaign (see my previous “news story”) I have some sympathy, but can’t help give a rather hollow laugh: when a rock singer is telling you to turn your music down you know the World’s Gone Mad.

Halford drove onto the stage at the end on his Harley Davidson (pictured) whilst singing Hell Bent For Leather. A great encore…

Priest have a long and illustrious history. They are one of those bands with an “old” and “new” period: a sort of unwritten and ephemeral honour that some long-standing bands are awarded. The live album Unleashed In The East caps off their earlier albums superbly. Unleashed… captures everything that’s great about the band. Fewer daft lyrics (sort of – we’re not talking Shelley here) and every song pounds along at a hundred miles per hour, except the masterful Victim of Changes which is heavier than a pair of concrete shoes.

What made the band unique was a combination of the twin-guitar sound (compared with Sabbath or Zeppelin’s single guitar sound), faster beats (compared with Sabbath) and a less blues-based approach. This, and Halford’s aggressive, soaring vocal style also differentiated them from US contemporaries such as Blue Oyster Cult.

Needless to say, this night at Hammersmith was an amazing gig. They’re a powerful live band and Rob Halford one of the great frontmen. Priest return to The Hammersmith Apollo this weekend, nearly twenty three years after these pictures were taken. That makes me feel old. I’m off for a nap…

Record #48: Judas Priest – Victim of Changes (live)

Pictures copyright: EveryRecordTellsAStory

Posted in Heavy Metal, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Plan B, Coldplay and Lemmy Unite to Fight Tinnitus

May 23, 2012 by every record tells a story

..and kids should dress nice too…

Plan B has joined Chris Martin of Coldplay’s campaign to encourage music fans to wear ear-plugs at live music events, to tidy their rooms, dress nicely and to not speak with their mouths full.

The rapper and singer would like to make people more aware of the damage they could do to their hearing, and is upset by what he sees as a lack of respect from youngsters when talking to grown-ups. He also doesn’t like it when teenagers put their feet on the seats on trains or drop sweet wrappers on the floor. “Some of them don’t know how to use a knife and fork properly too” he added.

The 28-year-old admitted he suffered from tinnitus, where there is a constant ringing tone or noise in the ear. It is estimated tinnitus affects almost quite a lot of people in the UK and is caused by exposure to loud noises.

Plan B recalls when he first became aware of it.

“I’ve been in clubs, in the DJ booth, and just felt my ears going,” he said.

“It was so loud and I thought, ‘This ain’t good.’”

Screeching

He said he knew something was wrong after he left the venue and he could still hear a “screeching sound”. “Even though we hadn’t even played one Mariah Carey record that night” he said.

“I now ask the clubs to turn the music down to a sensible level. It hurts my ears and gives me a migraine. And I hate it when the music is too loud in restaurants too. You go for a nice chat and you can’t hear what people are saying.”

Coldplay’s Chris Martin talked about his band’s desire to keep fans safe – “the polite ones anyway” he added. “We will be playing even quieter than normal on our forthcoming tour in case we hurt people’s ears” he said. “And we are handing out smart sparkly wristbands for fans to wear at the gig. But next year gentlemen will be required to wear a jacket and tie. And no trainers”.

Lemmy from Motorhead agreed with Chris Martin. “Whenever I hear Coldplay on the radio, I like to turn it down too” he said.

Leona Lewis and Labrinth also believe teenagers should wear ear plugs, behave better and tidy their rooms.

“Safety is more important than enjoyment,” said Labrinth “and whilst it’s nice to be important, it’s important to be nice”.

Free ear plugs

Whilst Labrinth supports a plan to give out free ear-plugs to concert-goers, Leona Lewis will go one step further on her forthcoming UK tour by providing licensed soft toys and pillows for fans frightened by the loud noise. A limited number of fans will also be able to buy VIP tickets that will allow them to watch the show from behind safety glass, and be tucked into bed at half-past nine by a nurse with a nice story – with free milk and cookies.

Plan B would also like to see music fans supplied with ear-plugs when they enter a gig.

“There should be a bucket of ear-plugs there and it’s their choice then,” he said.

“Especially the guys at the front. They give out water, so why not ear-plugs? And perhaps hankies in case people have a runny nose. Oooh – and biscuits. I like Malted Milks.”

The pop stars will be launching a single to raise money for the cause, written by TV’s Gary Barlow of Take That fame. The song “Be Nice To Grown-ups and Turn Your Music Down” will be released on 26th June in a special foam pack so it doesn’t hurt itself and will come with some free plasters and ear plugs. A limited 7” vinyl version will also be released and will be suitable for people with allergies. The CD version will contain software that will prevent the tune being played any louder than 55 decibels.

When asked for comment, AC/DC’s Bon Scott turned slowly in his grave.

Original BBC News Story here

Record #47: Motorhead – Deaf Forever

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UK wins Eurovision….because no other country has ever got close…

May 22, 2012 by every record tells a story

Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Baku "Love will set you free"

Every year, millions of people tune in to see a singing contest which serves up a musical kaleidoscope of vomit. An über-camp spectacle of ridiculous pop wannabes looking for their fifteen minutes of fame in the hope that it will lead to a Europe-wide hit single and perhaps immortality, only to be instantly forgotten until the whole thing kicks off again the following year.

But I’m not here to talk about the X-factor final. Let’s talk about the Eurovision Song Contest instead. The contest was a regular feature of my life as I grew up, from Brotherhood of Man, Bucks Fizz and er, Samantha Janus.

The build up to this year’s contest in Baku (Google it) has been entertaining. First Armenia declared they were withdrawing from the contest in protest at the host country er, Azerbaijan’s treatment of er, something or other. This was naturally a mortal blow to the musical contest as a whole which will miss Armenia’s extraordinary rock and pop heritage, which consists of er, precisely nothing.

Then the UK stepped up with the septuagenarian Engelbert Humperdinck whose dubious claim to fame is that his novelty song “Please Release Me” kept Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields off the number 1 slot in 1967, which resulted in the eventual split of The Beatles. Thanks Englebert. (NB. I know that’s not exactly why they split up, but let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story).

This clearly rattled the Russians, who took the view of “Anything you can do, we can do better” and voted in half a dozen octogenarian grannies / matrioshka dolls to sing their song, a certain case of one-upmanship, and a blatant attempt to win over the “silver” voters. I was half expecting Azerbaijan to come up with a ninety year old until I realised the average life expectancy for men over there is 63…

All of which is highly entertaining, but you can’t help be left with the feeling that this is the equivalent of watching a herd of cows fighting over a typewriter.

It’s also slightly baffling that the United Kingdom condescends to participate. I hope my European and American followers will forgive any slight jingoism here (at least those who are not asking “What the heck is the Eurovision Song Contest?”) , but we do rather seem to have already won this contest.

Somehow, between all the rain, recessions, currency devaluations and everything else that may or may not be wrong with this country, we have managed to give the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones,  The Kinks,  The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, The Clash, Queen, Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Muse…(pause for breath) Amy Winehouse, Adele, Mumford & Sons, George Michael, Elton John, Eric Clapton, yada yada yada…

Even the larger European countries struggle against that lot. Sweden hit the jackpot with Abba. Germany lead the rest of Europe with Kraftwerk, Nena and The Scorpions (still not that great a return over sixty years if we’re being brutally honest), France have Jonny Halliday and Spain gave the world the Macarena. Italy and Austria can point to opera and orchestral music, but so what? It doesn’t exactly rock… *

Why are we having a competition with (in the nicest possible way) Kazakstan or whoever about who has the best songs?!! And why don’t we just enter Adele? (Is that cheating?). It’s Adele’s world right now. We’re just living in it..

It’d be like watching Stephen Hawking playing a five year old at noughts and crosses, but (and this is the annoying bit) getting the five year old’s classmates to judge the contest. It’s just a waste of everybody’s time. Hawking should be solving the great problems of time and space, not poncing about with five year olds playing games he can’t win because the voting is fixed. Something that, judging by the recent elections, Russia is allegedly getting very good at. Allegedly.

I predict a landslide win for the Russian Grannies….or the Russian occupation of Azerbaijan. Watch this space.

The Eurovision Song Contest is on BBC1 on Saturday 26th May. At the same time that Judas Priest play Hammersmith Apollo. You choose.

The first semi-final is tonight on BBC3.

*Apologies for the unfair selectiveness of these countries’ musical outputs. Very unkind of me. But anything to raise a smile…

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Guns n Roses at The Marquee Club

May 20, 2012 by every record tells a story

I have very few regrets in life….

Perhaps I should have danced with that pretty brunette at the school disco when I was ten years old instead of looking horrified. On reflection I didn’t take enough care when using that scalpel when twelve, resulting in an unscheduled trip to A&E.  As a teenager that haircut was pretty bad, and I was probably slow to discover that the use of sarcasm wasn’t always a winning strategy to get people on your side.

Perhaps my biggest regret however was knowing about the three dates that Guns n Roses played in June 1987 at The Marquee Club in London’s Wardour Street and deciding that I wouldn’t go. For my generation, that’s like passing up the chance to see The Beatles at The Cavern Club. Three times.

It gets worse. I even had a money off voucher. Metal Hammer magazine had one that gave a pound off seeing either Tesla or Guns n Roses at The Marquee.

Like a foolhardy quiz show contestant deciding that the capital of Spain is b) Barcelona, I went to see Tesla.

Now: Tesla were great. And they were even better when they supported Def Leppard a few months later and I had a front row ticket. But Guns n Roses, in hindsight, were better. To use another Beatles analogy, I feel like Dick Rowe: the man at Decca who passed on The Beatles, saying “guitar bands are on their way out”. Damn.

Thank goodness for the front row ticket I got to see Guns n Roses support Aerosmith at Hammersmith Odeon just a few months later. Amazing seats. Great gig. Or so it would have been had it not been cancelled. Double Damn. That was the best gig I never went to. Read that again. Front Row. Hammersmith. Guns n Roses and Aerosmith. 1987.

To be fair, the Marquee gigs were prior to the release of Appetite For Destruction. I had heard Night Train on the Friday Rock Show and liked it, but I also liked Aerosmith’s new songs from Permanent Vacation. In 1987 (is that really 25 years ago?!) I was a huge Aerosmith fan, and GnR‘s sound was heavily influenced by those ’70s Aerosmith albums like Rocks, which were still relatively unknown in the UK. To me, GnR were the newest and best of a large number of similar American bands like Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison and Faster Pussycat. And as good as Appetite was, Aerosmith were resurgent and seemed to be “the real thing”…

In hindsight of course, Aerosmith’s ’80s and ’90s output was a pale shadow of their ’70s albums – and GnR’s Appetite… was streets ahead of even Permanent Vacation – released at around the same time.

In a wait almost as long as one of Axl’s stage appearances, it still took a year for Appetite For Destruction’s popularity to reach beyond the Kerrang! reading cognoscenti. By then, Sweet Child of Mine was a global hit and they were a lowly fifth on the bill at 1988′s Monsters of Rock at Castle Donington – and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to see them again…

(I’ll come to that show another time).

Axl Rose June 2006

Axl Rose and Guns n Roses at The Hammersmith Apollo June 2006:
Taken on my Nokia 6230i: Hi tech stuff…

Fast forward nineteen years to June 2006. A Donington warm up show. Chinese Democracy has yet to be heard (officially anyway) and the wait has lasted longer than the entire career of The Beatles. I am at at the front of the Hammersmith Apollo crowd. It is 10.45pm. I have already sent a text to a friend living in London to get his spare room ready: I have no chance of catching my last train. Axl – the only original member of that line up still standing – was due on stage two hours ago. He’s almost as late in arriving as his countrymen were in the Second World War. The crowd are booing. So am I.

The lights darken and the opening notes of Welcome To The Jungle ring out…

Everyone goes absolutely mental.

The show is a triumph. It was genuinely brilliant. Two thirds of Appetite… is played. Sebastian Bach of Skid Row joins Axl during the show. Bumblefoot’s guitar turns into a butterfly (or something)…

You could write a book about the odd things that have gone on around Guns n Roses. Indeed Slash wrote a very entertaining one. But there’s a reason why some bands reach legendary status. It’s because of their songs. And because they can still deliver a performance. Even if it’s two hours late…

The sign outside Hammersmith Apollo that night. More quality photography from the Every Record studios…

Guns n Roses start their UK tour tonight – they’ll be onstage in Nottingham in about four hours. After midnight. Probably.

Guns n Roses also play Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and London’s O2 Arena. They will be great. But book a hotel.

Record #46: Guns n Roses – Welcome To The Jungle

Posted in Hair Metal, Hard Rock, Music | Tagged , , , , , | 23 Comments »

Every Record – The 50th Episode – And Best Bits So Far (and A Versatile Blogger Award)

May 17, 2012 by every record tells a story

A million dollars a show and they still can’t afford their own milkshakes…

Hey – remember when the Friends or Seinfeld writers needed to deliver two more shows to the network, but had run out of budget, so they cobbled together a story by playing highlights of old episodes introducing the clips by Chandler (or Kramer) saying ” Hey – remember when…..”?

Hey – remember when you stumbled across the Every Record Tells A Story blog for the first time? Today is my fiftieth post on Every Record Tells A Story. A good time to look back on those twenty-five thousand words. How was it for you?

Since I started this dreadfully self-indulgent trawl through my life’s most significant (if not always the most listenable) tunes, more than 180 discerning, highly intelligent and probably very attractive people (including an international pop star of some repute: no names but it impressed my wife enormously) have clicked a “Follow” or “Like” button at some point, either on WordPress, Twitter or Facebook. If that includes you – even if you did it accidentally – let me say “Thank You”: I have found it is more satisfying knowing I am writing for fifty to a hundred people a day than it is just writing for my mum…

(Cue guitar riff from The Rembrandts’ I’ll Be There For You) Hey – remember when I interviewed a Spandau, had a shortened version of my Shades Records piece published on The Guardian’s web-site, and spoke out about the Seatwave and Viagogo ticket scandal?

(Cue Seinfeld-funky slap bass twanging) Hey – remember when in one of my posts about What’s Wrong With Radio 2, I cleverly pinpointed the main issue as being the station’s playlist being controlled by what was on Tony Blackburn’s iPod?

True Story: I tuned in again at the start of May to see if my plan to save Radio 2 by removing Blackburn from the station had been acted upon. I don’t mind admitting to being somewhat disheartened when not only was he still there, but the first song I heard him play was “Remember You’re A Womble” by The Wombles.

Q.E.D.  - Even though I owned this record as a child, I hope someone from the station is listening before it’s too late…

(Twang twang burble slap) Hey – remember when…I compared ZZ Top to Sigue Sigue Sputnick? Or when I blamed Peter Gabriel for giving Kiss Drummer Peter Criss the inspiration for Beth? The Top Ten Worst Dressed Men in Rock? Or the three posts about Status Quo in which I failed to mention the time they ran over a kangaroo, dressed it up in sunglasses and a denim jacket and took a photo of it, only for the animal to regain consciousness and hop off with the denim jacket. All quite amusing until they realised it had the keys to the tour bus in its pocket?

Hey – remember when I won a Kreativ Blogger Award from BeforeIForget? Well, I have won another award: The Versatile Blogger Award – this time from I Made You A MixTape - a California based blog which looks great and has a great selection of tunes to delve deeply into. Thanks for the award – I’ll be making some further recommendations before too long…

(another snippet of a riff from The Rembrandts) …and hey – remember when I wrote that really lazy self-indulgent (I mean a blog post about blogging? Sheesh) innovative time I dressed up a load of links to previous posts to look like a new post…? Oh. Ah. Yes. Sorry about that. Let’s call this post forty-nine and a half. I promise to do better next time.

In the meantime, here’s another couple of pictures of Joshua Hayward from last week. The kids on Tumblr are lapping this stuff up…he’s lovely apparently. Something about his hair…

The “gorgeous” Joshua Hayward, apparently…

Posted in Music | Tagged , , | 12 Comments »

Kiss – Exposed!

May 16, 2012 by every record tells a story

Paul Stanley Gene Simmons

A laughable collection of has-beens that no-one takes seriously any more. But that’s enough about Parliament – here’s the Hottest Band in the World – KISS!

After the Kiss Animalized Uncensored Live video, I was keen to see more. This led me to new release Kiss – Exposed!. This was packed with archive footage of the band, and set (apparently) at the band’s home. Yes, it appeared that like a comic book Morecambe and Wise, Kiss all lived together like one happy family.

“Ace Frehley is playing all the right notes – just not necessarily in the right order…”

Even the doorbell rang to the tune of Rock and Roll All Nite and the house was floor-to-ceiling carpeted with glamourous looking women. I didn’t realise it at the time but the band had hired the Playboy mansion for this bit.

The loose plot consisted of a nerdy reporter wanting to interview the band. This found him finding Paul Stanley in bed with six women all named Carol ( “I went caroling last night” said Paul apologetically delivering perhaps the world’s weakest punch line), and asking whether the video for “I Want it Loud” was “a bit fascist” to which Gene Simmons dead panned “it’s not facist, it’s one of the slowest things we’ve ever done…” This, it turned out, was the world’s second weakest punch line.

Better than the jokes was the archive footage of the band from the seventies: Simmons breathing fire resplendent in full “God of Thunder” make up and looking leaner than fillet steak. Ace Frehley’s guitar solo which resulted in the guitar turning into a rocket and flying up and offstage. Peter Criss singing “Beth” appallingly but with much charm and throwing flowers into the audience. Paul Stanley still prancing around like a hairier (but thinner) Spanish pony. Looking at this footage it was clear why, along with some great tunes, Kiss were special.

The final VHS I heard about was a Kiss feature film called The Phantom of the Park. Upon release, the VHS was advertised in Shades Records at the extraordinary price of £74.99. I eventually hired it from a video shop for £3 and found a fascinating yet extraordinarily bad feature film with acting that would be an insult to chairs to call wooden. I felt robbed spending £3, never mind £75…

Double live albums Kiss Alive and Alive II were huge commercial successes in the ’70s and both show the band at their best. The first also rather wonderfully features Stanley’s vodka and orange juice rap: it had clearly been going over well with the crowd for over a decade!

It’s easy to knock Kiss. Critics might point to the odd mediocre record (inevitable when you’ve been around for nearly 40 years), relentless fleecing of their fan base with licensed merchandise and plagiarism from originators like Alice Cooper, Bowie, New York Dolls etc.

When Kiss produced their own Kiss comic and added a little of their blood into the printing ink, Alice Cooper was asked if he would like to do the same. He wryly replied “Sure: I’d like to use all of Kiss’s blood in a comic book!”

However, like any band that has had ups and downs, none of that matters when I hear the car crash and opening chords of Detroit Rock City, or Deuce, or Black Diamond, or Cold Gin, or Love Gun, or Christine Sixteen, or Rocket Ride, or Strutter, or Shout it Out Loud, or, or…

Record #45: Kiss – Detroit Rock City

Posted in Hair Metal, Hard Rock, Music | Tagged , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Kiss…..And Things You Don’t See Anymore #3: Denim Jackets With Band Names on the Back

May 13, 2012 by every record tells a story

Heavy Metal Jacket

It’s a Louis Vitton…

So what is one of the most powerful advertising weapons utilised to attract the youth of Britain to buy products?

YouTube?

Facebook?

Search Engine Optimisation?

TV?

Oh no. Compared to the real success story of the last forty years these things are mere bagatelles. In fact, over two decades from 1970-1990 the most effective branding exercise ever accomplished was achieved through the power of………embroidery.

As a fan of Aerosmith, I looked everywhere for a patch to sew onto my denim jacket – but it was hard enough buying their albums in 1986, never mind knitwear. In the end, I borrowed my mum’s embroidery cotton and needles and did it myself. A year later, they were headlining Wembley Arena. (I have always been modest about my part in their rise to fame, but I think now is the time to mention it…).

And until they scored a hit with Crazy Nights, Kiss were a band that most people in the UK had never heard, but were nevertheless aware of, mainly due to the power of sewing: their faces and logo were plastered over the back of unwashed denim jackets in town centres and youth clubs throughout the land. Great branding and free advertising for a band never played on the radio.

I bought a VHS video of the band (make-up free): Animalize Live Uncensored (quite who wanted to censor it or why was never made clear) to find out what the fuss was all about.

The first surprising thing I noticed was just how camp Paul Stanley was. John Inman had nothing on this man. For someone who allegedly went through women like “a hot knife through butter” as one of their songs of the time delicately put it…he was clearly playing the androgynous card, not that I knew what “androgynous” was.  Looking back Stanley must have been heavily influenced by Bowie (Stanley’s Star Child vs Bowie’s Star Man…?)

Introducing the song Cold Gin, Paul Stanley addressed the crowd in a shrill Queens accent – think Fran Drescher from TV series “The Nanny” (and briefly in Spinal Tap) and you’ll have the right voice in your head.

“I hear that you good people in Detroit” he pouted, coquettishly yet earnestly  “like to drink Vodka and Orange Juice!!”

He said this like a schoolboy pulling a rabbit from a hat and looked just as pleased with himself, as if the aforementioned drink was anything other than the most dreadful cocktail that your mum only drinks after she’s finished with the Baileys, and the Khalua has run out. If I had been in the Detroit crowd I would have felt insulted. They whooped and cheered like he had somehow been privy to a great local secret.

“Paul Stanley is one of us” buzzed the whole of Detroit…”he knows about the vodka and orange juice thing…” “But how?” someone else said. “That’s a local secret!” … “What vodka and orange thing?”…”Ssshhh…”

He then pranced about like a Spanish dressage pony, only hairier, and with a shaggier mane.

Gene Simmons meanwhile gave a contemptuous look across the stage – the sort Simon Cowell reserves for when dismissing a particularly inept butler, footman or girlfriend.

The video was a great introduction to the band..but where was the face paint? I’d seen that on the back of jackets, but there was no sight of it here. For that I would need to buy another video… (he said, cleverly lining up a cliff-hanger ending to get you to come back to read the next post….)

Record #43 – Kiss – Cold Gin

Posted in Hair Metal, Hard Rock, Music | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments »

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