"I wanna war between the rich and the poor. I wanna fight and know what I'm fighting for."
The Adventures of Robert Savage Vol. 1 (1971)
This album kicks off like a bomb. Guitar-heavy sideburn-rock featuring a female soul singer with a voice like a banshee absolutely peeling the paint from the walls on the unfortunately titled, "Beaver Baby." When she hits a certain pitch you can actually hear the mic starting to distort as the levels go into the red. I think a few of the dishes in my cupboard are broken after listening to this and I mean that in the best possible way.
I honestly thought I had discovered the 70's version of, "The Bell Rays." After that, it was more than a little disappointing to find out that the singer, whoever she is, does not appear anywhere else on the album. What's left is unspectacular, occasionally countrified 70's rock with bad "In-A-Gada-Da-Vida" vocals.
Who is this Robert Savage you may ask? Well the first story I heard is that he's the chairman of American Express, who traded in his flairs and trimmed his mutton chops, after making this one vanity album in the 70's, to become a multimillionaire. That's a better story, but he's really a guy named Bobby Arlin who went on to play with the band, "The Leaves". Whatever.
His lead playing is decent, although with repeated listens it sounds like he is using the same licks over and over again. The drummer continually uses my least favorite drum fill of all-time, which is just basically alternating between the hi-hat and snare 3 times. It's hard to explain but it's the kind of thing you think sounds flashy when you suck. Total amateur hour.
The songwriting is pretty basic and/or juvenile, "Beaver Baby," "7 Days Drunk," "and "Road Apples," are certainly no more deep than their titles would suggest and, in some instances, even less. What I want to know is how you can make a song called, "Save Us From The Cyclops," that is not even slightly interesting. Elsewhere, we are treated to lines like, "It's a lonely world when you're all alone." You don't say.
If you run a cross this album buy it, I guarantee it's worth a few bucks to collectors of such things. Otherwise do whatever you can to download or otherwise acquire a version of "Beaver Baby," and if you get the liner notes, tell me the name of the woman who sings on it. Thanks a bunch.
Bedlam (1970)
This short-lived band is most notable for featuring drumming legend, Cozy Powell. Generally acknowledged as one of the greatest of all time, Cozy's resume boasted a huge number of bands and album appearances but he seemed to have never played with a top echelon band for very long. He played briefly with Jeff Beck, had tenures with both "Rainbow," and "Whitesnake," and two separate stints in Black Sabbath back when they absolutely sucked shit (1988-1991 and 1994-1995).
He strikes me as the Gene Hoglan of 70's and 80's, raved about by critics and peers but constantly circulating through bands and projects of inconsistent quality. I personally don't see the value in being a first rate drummer in a mediocre band. Not that "Death," is anything to sneeze at, in Gene's case, but even though he may have taught Dave Lombardo everything he knows - Dave was in Slayer. Game, set, match.
We can yak all day about who's really better but Dave Lombardo played on, "Reign In Blood," and Gene Hoglan did not. Who cares who can play the fastest bass drum triplets?
Back to the actual album, the opener, "Believe In You," really rocks it out with a riff at one point that actually sounds sounds like "Iron Maiden," (somewhere roughly between, parts of "Ancient Mariner," and "Where Eagles Dare.") It sounds like it may actually feature Cozy playing double-bass on it and the singer seems to be channeling Roger Daltry from his full-on shirtless, Ultimate Warrior, fringed jacket, Woodstock period. Wow! The second tune sounds a bit like the theme from "Shaft," to begin with, which is odd but also cool, and then settles in to a decent rock song. Unfortunately the quality it slides considerably from there, due to their penchant for drippy ballads and otherwise unremarkable material.
"Whiskey and Wine," is sub-par and cliche ridden. (Let's see, do you think whiskey and wine might make you ... "feel fine," possibly?) "Through These Eyes," is utter cheese.
You heard most of these lyrics, riffs and licks before. "Putting On The Flesh," is decent but Cozy's impressive pounding still doesn't make up for lyrics like, "Please surrender to my touch." It's a sad fact that, even though a good drummer is absolutely essential to a good band, (if you don't think so, check out a band with a bad one some time) they can only improve a mediocre band into a mediocre band with good drummer.
*
"Orange Glasses Pick": Josefus - Dead Man (1970) There's something about Southern bands that gives them the ability to sound intense and laid back at the same time. Maybe it's the heat and humidity that forces them to keep a groove even when they're raging. Guitar players take an extra second and milk a note while they push the sunglasses back up on their nose. This doesn't explain the number of death-metal bands from Florida playing blast beats, but that's not the real south anyway. Not if you live in Orlando or Miami, maybe if you live in the swamp. I digress. You can try to gallop along but the humidity sticks to you and forces the tempo down a few bpms.
Josefus are from the South; The People's Republic of Texas, to be exact. They enjoyed some success on at least a regional level but broke up due to internal conflict before making any sort of impact.
"Dead Man," in it's various pressings, is highly sought after by collectors of rare albums by forgotten bands. That gives Josefus the dubious distinction of being one of the most famous obscure bands in history.
Their notoriety has come mainly from playing in a heavy rock style that predated many of the more famous bands in the genre.
The bones on the cover are kind of fitting because listening to this record is kind of like going on an archeological dig and finding evidence that predates the earliest known fossils; interesting to consider in terms of the origins of the species but unspectacular compared to what would follow.
Their drawn-out, riffy jams are definitely primitive sounding and the lyrics to songs like "Crazy Man," and "I Need a Woman," may not be quite up to par with the best bands of the day. They do excel at locking down a groove and laying back into it, with Dave Mitchell's countrified guitar licks gliding lazily above, as if to say, "It's just too warm outside to bother trying to get anywhere fast. We're in Texas for Fuck's sake."
When they allude to their roots on,"Country Boy," it's not much of a surprise, due to reasons already stated above.
Elsewhere, the instrumental section on, "Proposition," is especially chilling and shows real promise, and "Situation," jams pretty hard. Singer Pete Bailey can definitely wail, and also blows a mean harmonica but sometimes makes it a bit too obvious when he's straining his voice just out of his range.
In retrospect the cover of The Stones' "Gimme Shelter," is a bit unnecessary and, "Dead Man," the album-closing title track, which clocks in at just over seventeen minutes, serves as a reminder that a song is only considered epic if it is exceptionally good, otherwise it's just long. Josefus is the type of band that showed tremendous promise but, due to circumstance, were never able to live up to their potential and appeared only as a blip on the cultural radar.
Their surviving work is less a document of the musical legacy they leave behind than it is a testament to how good they could have eventually become.
Jerusalem 1972
This band is notable mostly for being produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. It limps out of the gate a bit with the by-the-numbers "Frustrated," which sounds essentially like your average garage band. They regain their footing a bit with the cool, "Hooded Eagle," but lose it again with the boring, "I See The Light," ("I Turn Out The Light And Go To Sleep," more like it. )
As a side note, how weird must this dude have felt tracking his vocals with the human air-raid siren Gillan behind the board?
I can just imagine him saying something like, "Sorry dude, I don't know what a G over high C even is."
Richie Blackmore isn't exactly on guitar here either. Boring, sort of half-speed licks at times remind me of the manner in which old people fuck; slow and sloppy. It sounds like the dude's amp needs more gain or his guitar has shitty pick-ups or something.
"Murderer's Lament," is goofy and overly melodramatic and it's first person lyrics about breaking a woman's neck could probably be misinterpreted badly. I'm guessing it would have been a bad choice as their first single.
"Midnight Steamer," is apparently about getting up to use the can in the middle of the night (?) It ends up being the bestest rockingest track here. "Primitive Man," is another good one, almost doomy with enough changes to keep it interesting, "Beyond The Grave," and "She Came Like a Bat From Hell," close the album(these guys get full marks for song titles) are two looser jams that seem to suit their style more. I think this is a case of a band that sounds better when they can experiment a bit more, which unfortunately doesn't happen til somewhere near side 2. The vocals are more hoarse and shouted and actually sound better and the playing sounds less forced. In the end, Jerusalem's only album has, at best, a couple of good songs. I hereby pronounce them to be, "pretty good."
Human Instinct - Stoned Guitar (1970)
One of the things I like about, "Hunt and Gather," is the chance to listen to an album with no information besides the record cover and song titles and then figure out any information about the band afterward. This band was from New Zealand, featuring a guy called Billy TK; "The Maori Jimi Hendrix." The album is full of very loose, "Band of Gypsies," style jam outs. There are some vocals but they're low in the mix and really secondary to the acid drenched orgy of leads. Stoned guitar indeed. For a contemporary reference I think these guys can be best compared to, "Earthless". The songs are really just starting off points for TK's extended guitar freak-outs. Your enjoyment of this album will be directly proportionate to how much you like long psychedelic guitar solos. Oh and just so you know the shortest tune on the album (4:23) with no guitar solos (or electric guitar at all) sucks, so even if you were getting annoyed with all the wanking, when it disappears, you start getting bored and wondering when the guitar solos are going to kick in again. Recommended in small doses. Like the brown acid. Groovy, man.
This Scottish band's "album,"(I'll explain the quotes in a minute)
starts out sounding like the bridge between blues-influenced hippie rock and heavy 70's sludge. Then they shift gears and sound like the Yardbirds for a bit. When it picks up again, he guitarist goes nuts, soloing over everything, then the very next song isn't heavy at all. It's kind of weird when strings creep in for about 2 songs and then disappear. "Take Me Back," starts out with aforementioned strings, (still a crappy recording, mind you) morphs into a blues standard and then just drops out, out of nowhere.
"Real Mean Rocker," is a by-the-numbers rockabilly number that anyone could write in 5 seconds.
They jump from style to style more than any band who's record sounds this bad would possibly do over the course of one record. This aroused my suspicions enough to double check if the entire album was recorded by the same musicians during the same sessions.
The reason I hesitated to call it an album earlier is because it is actually a compilation cobbled together from different studio sessions between 1970 and 1974. The demo-like quality of the recording, and the dramatic shift in styles could easily give the impression that this is a comp. of different bands.
The heavy material has gotten a lot of attention and, in the band's bio, there's story about how Black Sabbath had threatened to sue them for stealing their sound. I'm not gonna say they're full of shit, so I won't; they just are. Aside from distortion that sounds like a cross between Blue Cheer and a fart in a bathtub and a few tracks completely overshadowed by a guitarist who should look up the word "restraint," in the dictionary, anyone expecting to discover the forgotten forefathers of metal should set their expectations a bit lower.
There are a few good tunes here, but 14 songs is a big stretch considering there's maybe enough good material here for an EP.
What we have here is a mixed bag of cheapo basement recordings by a band never able to really nail down a style that really worked for them. Anyone making Budgie comparisons is either drunk or seriously over-medicated. Unfortunately, when the album is finally over, I'm still not able to answer the question, "What do Iron Claw sounds like?"
(L to R: Dambra, Justin, Garner)
(Louis Dambra)
(John Garner live @ Carnegie Hall)
The band Sir Lord Baltimore has no real connection to the city of Baltimore. The band is named after the same guy that the city is named after, if that makes sense, and actually come from Brooklyn. They are notable for being one of the few bands with a lead singer who is also a drummer and also for, legend has it, being the first band ever referred to as, "heavy metal." (I've heard the same said about "Humble Pie.") The story goes that music critic and future "Angry Samoans," singer, Mike Saunders, (forever after to be called "Metal Mike,") wrote a review of Sir Lord Baltimore's debut LP, "Kingdom Come," for Creem magazine using a term he may have borrowed from the line "heavy metal thunder," in the Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild." As time went on, sadly, Mike gained more notoriety for coining the expression than Sir Lord Baltimore did for inspiring it.
The trio formed in 1968 and consisted of John Garner - drums/vocals, Louis Dambra - guitar and Gary Justin - bass.
"Kingdom Come," was released by Mercury Records in 1970, and while it is now regarded as a classic, the album sold poorly.
The follow-up "Sir Lord Baltimore," was released the next year and featured Louis' brother Joey on second guitar. The album fared even worse and the band was soon dropped by the label. Unspecified drug issues were cited by the band as another contributing factor in their break-up. "Sir Lord Baltimore III," was in the works at the time but not completed. The band is now generally recognized as being light-years ahead of their time, cited as a major influence of many heavy doom or, "stoner rock," bands.
Both albums have readily since become cult classics and re-issued on one CD.
Kindome Come (1970) I can only imagine how Sir Lord Baltimore sounded to people in the late sixties and early seventies because they sound absolutely insane now. They had a way of sounding like they're going to fall apart at any minute but never actually do. John Garner's wide, dramatic, vibrato vocal style ranges from rumbling, almost baritone to howls, screams shrieks and wails. Louis Dambra's guitar playing pushes bad-assed blues to the limit, crossing the boundary into what would later be called heavy metal. By the time "Lake Isle of Innersfree," pops up and brings the tempo down, you're finally able to catch your breath for a minute.
The full-on intensity they generate from beginning to end is so over-the-top the top can't even be seen from where they end up. After the record is over you find yourself sitting there, stunned thinking, "What the hell just happened?" This album is heavy rock pushed to the absolute limit and completely deserving as the first record referred to as "heavy metal."
Sir Lord Baltimore (1971)The second Sir Lord Baltimore lacks some of the intensity of "Kingdom Come," but, honestly, that could be said about every other album on the planet. Louis Dambra's brother adds a second guitar which is a nice touch. Louis does as good a job as I've heard channeling Tony Iommi on the album opener "Chicago Lives," but that wasn't as great a complement in 1971, since Tony was the competition and someone Dambra would share the stage with on more than one occasion.
John Garner's distinctive howl is still front and centre and there is some cool riffing on, "Woman Tamer." "Man From Manhattan," has a bit of a tedious build-up into a cool middle instrumental section. There are only six tunes here with "Manhattan," taking up more than it's fair share of space and the live track, "Where Are We Going," is interesting mainly because it's the only live track of theirs ever released. (It was actually recorded live on a soundstage. Oh well.)
It feels like they had to stretch for an album's worth of material, perhaps not as ready as they could have been to enter the studio. The sparse amount of music is good though and sees them branching out without messing with the formula too much.
Is this as good an album as "Kingdom Come?" No. Does that mean it is anything less than essential listening? Absolutely not. It's disappointing that this had to be their swan song but for no reason pertaining to the quality of the record, just because we were denied the possibility of so many more great records.
It should be noted that on the original album release, sides one and two were reversed, starting the album with just "Man From Manhattan," and the live "Where Are We Going," on side 1. This would play 100 times worse than the way it was presented on the eventual re-issue.
It's also worthy of mention that SLB have re-formed without Gary Justin years later and released "Sir Lord Baltimore III: Raw." I usually try to avoid such, "reunion albums. The fact that no label was willing to release it, necessitating a self-release and also that, lyrical themes are said to reflect John Garner's born-again Christianity made the decision to stay away much easier for me.
