For Queen’s fifth studio album, ‘A Day at the Races’ is considered a sort of companion piece to the preview album ‘A Night at the Opera’. The only connection I feel really is the fact both are titled after Marx Brother movies. Outside of that, they don’t feel connected to me at all. The album was recorded between July 1976 and November 1976 and get its release on December 10, 1976. The album was self-produced by Queen which is the first time they had done that and I am not so sure it worked as well as they hoped. Now their long time producer might be gone, but the band was still in tact. Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are still going strong.
The album did ship Gold. went to #1 in the UK and #5 in the US and would go on to Platinum status so the band did something right. They released 5 singles and their popularity kept growing with each album release. However, this is not an album I ever really connected to and I gave it enough listens. I actually ended up skipping a couple songs on later listens of the album and that is never a good sign. Now, I am not saying the album is horrible, no as they do make worse ones down the road, I am only saying that I didn’t find this one to be as good as a lot of people say it is. Don’t shoot me, it is only my opinion and plus, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about half the time anyway.
Alright…You Picked It! And this one was probably the closest one yet. Last week was a nail biter of a finish on which album one, this time around, it wasn’t even close. The winner was King Crimson’s ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ which I had never heard before. The votes were as follows:
King Crimson – ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ – 13 votes
AC/DC – ‘For Those About to Rock’ – 4 votes
The Cult – ‘Electric’ – 2 votes
Rob Zombie – ‘The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy’ – 1 vote
David Lanz – ‘Cristofori’s Dream – 1 Vote
Thanks to all for participating. The April choices will be up on Saturday!
King Crimson – ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’ (1969):
King Crimson’s debut album, ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’, is said to be a very influential album and the first ever Prog Rock album, so that made it a little intimidating for me to review like all the classic albums I have reviewed. It is a little scary to tackle as you hope you hear what everyone else hears, but sometimes you don’t. Now, I will be honest and let you now I am not a huge Prog Rock fan. Most albums I have, a 6 minute song is probably the longest song on the album. Here it is the shortest song on the album. Also, the same is said that most of my albums have 10 or more songs, this one only has 5. Yes, welcome to the world of Prog Rock!!
King Crimson consisted of some amazing musicians, I will give them that. Take a look for yourself…
Greg Lake – Bass, Lead vocals (also in Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
Ian McDonald – Alto Saxophone and flute (also Foreigner)
Robert Fripp – Guitar (Brian Eno and David Bowie)
Michael Giles – Drums (Leo Sayer and many, many more)
Peter Sinfield – Lyrics (didn’t know that would make you a band member, but cool)
And I believe Robert Fripp along with Toyah Wilcox are making a name for themselves with their viral videos during the pandemic. You should check them out on the Tube of You.
The album is also known for the album cover of the up close and personal view of a man’s face with full shot of looking up his nostrils and the back of his throat. To me, it is an iconic cover and I’ve wanted it in my collection for years for that very fact. It was beautifully drawn by Barry Godber who sadly passed away only a few months after the albums release. This was the only album artwork he had ever done. What is cool is that Robert Fripp owns the original piece so it is in good hands.
It is time for us to do our shout-out to Eric Singer and one of his projects. Before Kiss, Eric had played with Black Sabbath and he even had his own band Badlands that released a stellar release in 1989. Then he joined Kiss with the Revenge album and stayed with the band up until the reunion tour in 1996. He would later play with numerous artist, but most notably the great Alice Cooper. However, I wanted to highlight one with a big Kiss connection because that is what I like to do. His side project the Eric Singer Project was a supergroup that had Eric on drums and vocals, Chuck Garric on bass and vocals, John Corabi and guitar, bass and vocals and the big Kiss connection is who was also in the band. It was Eric’s former Kiss co-hort, Bruce Kulick on guitar.
The band was a side group that played covers. They played some live shows and put out an album called ‘ESP’…Eric Singer Project. The one I see most Kiss collectors trying to grab up is this album so I figured this is the perfect album to do for Eric. I know, I probably should’ve done Badlands since this is all covers, but this had too big a Kiss connection to pass up. Plus, I love Corabi so it was a chance for me to hear him as well even if he isn’t singing all the time.
The track listing is pretty good with some not so common covers and there are a few that a typical cover songs. Here are the songs and the original band…
After finishing up the tour for ‘Sin After Sin’, the band didn’t rest for too long before they jumped right back in the studio. They were on a brutal schedule of album, tour, album, tour, etc… It can be exhausting. The band’s fourth album and second with Columbia records was recorded between October and November 1977. The album, ‘Stained Class’, was released on February 10, 1978 and would barely break the Billboard 200 Albums chart going to #173. But the album did go Gold selling over 500,000 copies, but reality is that album only went Gold after the success of the band in the early 80’s. Still Gold nonetheless.
The band saw something strange happen with this album. They got a new drummer which would now be the fourth drummer in four albums. That isn’t the strange part as their drummer turnover has been legendary. The strange part is new drummer, Les Binks, actually stayed on after the album was done and would go on to record two more albums with the band. That is a huge record for them and they should be so proud of themselves for not letting another drum go. And that wasn’t all. This is the ver first album that all 5 band members got writing credits on an album. Yes, Les got one credit and so did long time bassist, Ian Hill.
As you know if you visit my site, one of my favorite bands is Needtobreathe. I have everything they have put out on vinyl and now I am going after everything they have released on CD (that they don’t have on vinyl). And the CDs I want the most are the exclusive fan club CDs they release each year.
I had never joined prior to the 2020 year so getting my hands on these has not been easy as it is not cheap. I am looking for the right price and most of the time it is too high. I finally grabbed my first one at a price less than the membership fee which was Insiders LP Vol. 2 for $40 and 9 months later I got one even cheaper which was Insiders, Vol. 5 and it was only $25. And then a couple days later got another for $27 which was Insiders Vol. 3. Sorry we aren’t going in order, but we are going in order of when I receive them. And I just joined the 2021 Insiders Club and this time I am getting a T-Shirt and you guessed it, A Mask!! The CD for Insiders Vol. 8 will be out by January 2022. For now, we are discussing Insiders, Vol. VII from 2020 which this time it did cost me the cost of the club because I got tired of tyring to find all these. I still need volumes 1, 4 and 6 if you have them and want to sell.
Who is Needtobreathe you may ask and I will tell you. Needtobreathe is a rock band from South Carolina who mixes rock, folk, southern rock, country and whatever else they like all with a great message or story to tell. Currently the band is…
Can you believe it has been 30 years since The Black Crowes debut album, ‘Shake Your Money Maker’? It is hard to fathom some times. The Black Crowes came on the scene with the release of the album on February 13, 1990. The album goes against the grain of the music at the time. The 80’s Glam Rock scene was still alive, but the Crowes went back to the Rock & Roll roots and gave us some dirty, bluesy rock & roll and laughed in the face of those glam rockers. That scene would die out soon enough when Nirvana would come on to the scene. The album went on to sell over 5 million copies from 5 singles and reaching #4 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
The Black Crowes hail from Marietta, GA, my hometown (different high school though – they went to rival Walton and I was at Osborne). These guys were all over the place and the talk of the town. It was so cool to see these hometown heroes explode on to the scene and hit it big time. Nothing cooler than local boys making it to the top.
This box set is a 30 year celebration of the album and let me tell you the boys did it right. The box set comes in…well…a box. It looks wooden even thought it is really a very sturdy cardboard shaped to look like wood. The back cover list the track listing and inside are is the picture of the album over some flyers and passes. The admission price of $0.96 for me is intriguing because the 96 is shaped like the local rock radio station called 96 Rock which tells me that show was a promoted by that awesome radio station. It brings back a lot of memories. The set I have is the Super Deluxe Edition and the vinyl one at that. See below to see what comes in the set.
Up next on the side projects is former Kiss guitarist, Mark St. John. Mark played on Animalize but didn’t last real long with the band. He developed a type of arthritic condition in his fingers that was very troublesome. When the band toured live for the album, Mark only played in 3 shows. The excuse was given that he was let go because he couldn’t play due to the condition with this hands, but I am not so sure that is true. I think his guitar fill-in on the tour who happened to be Bruce Kulick fit in with the band better than Mark so they let Mark go while on tour and stuck with Bruce who would stay in the band for over a decade. Probably a great move on their part.
Now that doesn’t take away from Mark’s ability as he was a hell of a shredder on the guitar. His playing was fast and frantic and he could rip out a solo. After he left Kiss, he actually did form a band and release an album independently with a band called White Tiger so technically I should’ve reviewed that album back when we were in the 1985/86 timeline, but if you have been paying attention to the review series, I have been picking the side projects with larger Kiss connections and other than Mark, there isn’t another Kiss connection I could make. Instead, I went all the way to 1999 and his Mark St. John Project and the E.P. they released. Why you may ask. Well that is because of the 5 songs on the E.P., three of those songs were co-written with a former Kiss alum, Peter Criss. That is right, the Catman. Mark had been working on a project prior to this with Peter around 1990. They shopped around a demo but the response was not so good.
In the last few years, David Coverdale has been quite busy rehashing old material, but in a good way. He has brought us deluxe box sets for albums such as ‘Slide It In’, ‘1987’, ‘Slip of the Tongue’ and even ‘Unzipped’ the all acoustic box set. And thid year in 2021, we are supposed to get ‘Restless Heart’. But for now, he is rehashing old material yet again.
This time it is a series called ‘Red, White & Blue’ Trilogy. The Rock Album (White) was up first and then we got the Love Songs (Red) and now it is time for the The Blues Album (Blue, duh) which is our 40th Review in the David Coverdale Series. Crazy! Each album is really a glorified greatest hits album with its own theme and the titles give you those themes quite nicely. The big difference on these albums is more than just a remastering. The songs have been tinkered with and given a little touch-up with some re-mixing and even a little touch-up on arrangements and other little surprises. The songs aren’t completely re-imagined, thankfully it is no Bon Jovi “This Left Feels Right”. The songs are still very much recognizable, just enhanced ever so slightly.
This time around we get 14 Tracks and because of that, we aren’t going in to full detail song by song. We will highlight them as we go. The thing about these albums is they only cover a certain period of the band from 1984’s ‘Slide it In’ up to 2011’s ‘Forevermore’. Nothing off their latest album, 2019’s ‘Flesh & Blood” and strangely, this time there is nothing off 1989’s ‘Slip of the Tongue’ which is quite baffling. We do get a song from the bonus tracks on ‘Live in the Shadow of the Blues’ which is a nice treat. The biggest difference from this release and the other two are that there are NO new tracks on this one like the others. I’m a little disappointed by that aspect. There are also two tracks that appear on the other two which is another disappoint. Granted they are still a different mix than those other albums, but still.
The theme of the album is Blues so all the songs are sonically blues in nature…some more so than others. We do get some songs that are more rock and then blues, but there are hints of it in the guitar. One of the more rocking tracks is the opening song “Steal Your Heart Away” which is a beast and completely rocks out with the exception of the guitar has hints of Jimmy Page that blues sound he had. The mix on this brings those guitar to the forefront and cleans them up nicely. “Good to Be Bad” is more metal than blues, but Dave’s vocals seem to be enhanced to give them a more blues tone. “Give Me All Your Love” seems to only have been tweaked to give John Sykes guitars a little more punch.
The one track that was tweaked the most was “Take Me Back Again” which had Whitesnake current guitarists, Joel Hoekstra, adding a solo and keyboardist Derek Sherinian adding his own flair to the song as well. This is the most blues track so far and is plain killer. Side Two kicks off with the dirtiest, most awesome song, “Slow & Easy” seems to have an improved drum sound as damn, Cozy Powell is killing it and then “Too Many Tears” which was on the Love album prior, but here now sounds like more of a country & blues track with the guitar sound. The final track on the first LP is “Lay Down Your Love” and that opening sounds cleaner and doesn’t have the annoying echo opening as the original, a vast improvement and then that guitar comes in dang near blows the roof off this joint.
The second LP kicks up the blues with the opening track “The River Song” and is really what this album is about. The blues guitar playing is exceptional throughout especially that opening picking. And then to go in to “Whipping Boy Blues” is magical especially with the brand new opening with the frog and nature sounds. Takes you down to the swamp and really makes you feel the blues. Then we get the bonus track from “In the Shadow of the Blues” called “If You Want Me” and another brutally rocking track. The vocals have been improved with added textures and flavors. And lastly on this side we get “A Fool In Love” which is David doing the Blues the best. This side of the album has been what this album is all about. Perfection filled Blues Rock!!
The final side kicks off with the foot-stomping “Woman Trouble Blues” which has added come guitar to boost the song, but I have always loved the harmonica playing in the song which really adds that extra blues flair. It is all stellar. They slow things down with 1987’s “Looking for Love” which seems to have Sykes guitar cleaned up and clearer which no one would complain about. The final track is the classic “Crying in the Rain” which seems to have a slightly new beginning, some added guitar parts and a new ending that fades out with an echo added.
And there you have it. I think I like every track on here and the changes to the mix are all subtle and yet effective. Nothing strays far from the original and it is only enhancing the flavors of the song to give us the desired taste we are salivating over. He tweaked a pinch here and a dash there and gave us the best of the three albums in the trilogy. I will give it a 4.5 out of 5.0 Stars only because no new tracks and two repeated songs from the other albums (although a different mix). I know for sure that this one and the Rock one will get played again and again depending on my mood as to which one. The Love album is good, but too much on the ballad side. I still think you need to pick up all three…why not!!!
The Red, White & Blue Trilogy is now complete. The Love Album, The Rock Album and now the Blues Album. What a thing of beauty…
Now we are waiting on the announcement of The Restless Heart Super Deluxe Box Set and now rumors are running rampant that David Coverdale and Jimmy Page are working on a Deluxe Edition of Coverdale/Page…ooooh!!! That would be awesome. And in the liner notes of the Blues Album he even talks about a Box Set for Good to Be Bad!!! Some interesting stuff coming the David Coverdale world. Until next time…
Before the band could record their fourth album, they had to go through a lot of a business crap. Money was becoming an issue in the fact they weren’t getting any. They were extremely disappointed, to say the least, with their current management and record label, Trident. The hired a lawyer and for nine months, battled back and forth until they were successful in getting released from the Trident deal. But it was costly. They were able to get ownership back of their first few albums, but it cost them 1% royalty on the next 6 as well as pay £100,000 and the tour that was scheduled had to be cancelled because it was set up by the old management. Now this was 1975, so that is a lot of freaking money.
Queen was able to get new management and they singed with EMI (UK) / Elektra (US) and were set to create their next masterpiece. This album would be the most expensive album ever to be made (at the time of 1975). It cost £40,000 (or $338,000 in today’s dollars). It was so expensive due to the fact they recorded the album in seven different studios, over 4 months and required a lot of multi-tracking and they ended up using a 24-Track set up. Their last album only used a 16-Track tape. Queen was going big or going home. And if you know them at all, going big is the only way they know.
As we discussed back in the 1991 timeline, Eric Carr passed away on November 24, 1991 due to an aneurysm that probably stemmed from the numerous surgeries he had to remove tumors related to his heart cancer. Before his death, Eric was always writing songs as he was a very creative soul. He could write, he could sing and he could play more than just the drums. ‘Rockology’ is a collection of the songs he had been working on prior to his death. These are demos and not necessarily full fledge songs in some cases so keep that in mind. Think of this as his ‘Vault’ because it is very similar in the type of songs you get. You get some fully fleshed out songs, you get some where lyrics are being scatted because their aren’t any yet and you get some straight-up instrumentals.
The album was put together by one of Eric’s great friends and former Kiss bandmate, Bruce Kulick. With the help of Adam Mitchell (co-writer of numerous Kiss songs), they pieced together a collection of songs from old cassettes or where ever they could find them. They would clean them up the best they could, add some backing vocals where appropriate and even Bruce overdubbed some killer solos in a few songs to help complete them. Bruce produced the album and I think this was a wonderful tribute to his old friend and bandmate.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 