We are now in 1981 and the band is on their 4th album. Whitesnake has started to gain some traction with the album’s ‘Ready an’ Willing’ along with the live album ‘Live…in the Heart of the City’. When ‘Come an’ Get It’ arrives, it goes to #2 on the chart and barely misses #1 thanks to Adam and the Ants’ ‘King of the Wild Frontier’. Yes, an Ant kicked a Snake’s ass!!!
The band’s line-up is unchanged, the producer, Martin Birch, is unchanged and they follow the successful formula of ‘Ready an’ Willing on this album to rather great success (on the charts).
David Coverdale – vocals
Micky Moody – Guitar
Bernie Marsden – Guitar
Neil Murray – Bass
Jon Lord – Keyboards
Ian Paice – Drums
I know this is a favorite Snake album for a lot of people and even a favorite of David Coverdale’s; however, it isn’t one of my top albums. I have spent the longest with this album in hopes that it would grow on me and it has to some extent, but not overall. This was a hard beast for me to get through, well Side Two was. Side One kicks some major ass.
For Record Store Day Black Friday 2019, I got up bright and early to go stand in line for some Exclusive vinyls and most notably was for Matt Nathanson’s 2007 album ‘Some Mad Hope’. This was the first time that record was to be released on vinyl. Another exclusive I wanted was Pearl Jam’s MTV Unplugged appearance from 1992 finally being released on vinyl. And I’ll be honest, this is the FIRST Pearl Jam album I have actually bought on vinyl…I know, crazy right!! But what a way to start.
The album was recorded in 1992 right after the end of the Tour for their debut album ‘Ten’ and a set list that covers that album quite nicely, you are treated to one mesmerizing and very special performance. When I watched this back in the day, I realized than that the guys were pretty freaking great. I was not a Grunge fan at all as I come from the 80’s and the whole 80’s Rock scene. Grunge was blasphemy. But there was something about this show that resonated and when I saw it was coming out on vinyl, it was a no-brainer.
The packaging is a beautiful gatefold for only 1 LP which I always love to see.
Do you have a memory that is tied to a specific band and when you hear that band, you immediately are transported to that memory? Britny Fox has such a memory for me. Now I am the youngest of 7 kids and I am the only one of the 7 to have lived alone with my parents as an older child as all my brothers & sisters had moved out and I was left alone during high school and part of college. As a result, I actually was able to take vacations with my parents and it just be them and me. None of the others got to do that sort of thing.
Every Summer, my parents would head down to their time share down in New Smyrna Beach, Florida and I would tag along because why not…free vacation. I cherish those times with them and now that they have both passed from this Earth, I think of them often and miss them dearly. You are probably wondering how Britny Fox helps with that memory and I will tell you.
When this album came out on June 6th, 1988, I had just purchased on CD and we were heading out to vacation. I remember sitting by the pool, with my Sony portable CD player, headphones on and this CD cranked up. I was probably 18 and since I was so shy, I was not about to be scoping out the hot babes at the pool. Nope! Instead, I would sit by the pool in my tan, smoking ripped body and pretend like nothing else mattered but the music. Ok, not all of that was true…I wasn’t very tan. Ok, and I didn’t have a smoking hot ripped body. I was scrawny little shit.
Welcome back to final review in the series which is Part 6 of the 6 Part series. We have already talked about the Box Set and its packaging in Part 1 and we have covered Disc 1 and Disc 2 in the set. For those, we got about 20 unreleased tracks between those two. Quite impressive. For Disc Three, we only get 3 unreleased tracks and Disc Four we only get 2 unreleased tracks and for the final disc, Disc 5, we only get 3 previously unreleased tracks. As a result, I will also talk about the other songs on here to make it a fair representation.
For Disc 5, we only have 3 studio albums and some live albums to include on this set and not everything was great. As far as studio it is the fantastic ‘Revenge’, the lack of direction ‘Carnival of Souls’ and the reunion album ‘Pschyo Circus’ which not everyone played on so not really a reunion, but that is another discussion. You also get tracks from the MTV Unplugged album, The Detroit Rock City Soundtrack and some unreleased tracks. Here are the songs and I love how Eric Carr in Fox Makeup is the background!!
First up on the disc are four songs from the album ‘Revenge’ which is an album that saw Gene get comfortable in his skin again and gave us one of their heaviest albums since Creatures. It was fantastic. Out of the four songs, we get the demo of “Domino” which was written by Gene in 1991 for the ‘Revenge’ album. The demo is pretty close to the original song with some minor changes as the solo in the album version is played at a different key than the demo. It is a cool piece to the collection.
The next batch of four songs is from the MTV unplugged album. The first three tracks are with Eric Singer and Bruce and the last song, “Nothin’ to Lose” has Ace and Peter on it. I think all four tracks are great as is that whole album. With so few albums to pull from on this set, we are getting a lot of songs for each album which is part of the drag on this disc.
Next we get two tracks from the album ‘Carnival of Souls’ and to say this isn’t a good album is almost an understatement. There are some good songs from the album such as “Master and Slave”, but the songs chosen for this release are not my favorites. These don’t sound like Kiss songs to me.
Then we get four songs from ‘Psycho Circus’ and none are demos or anything rare. The song choices are fine it is just like I said earlier, four songs from one release is a lot and it would have been nice to have more unreleased stuff on this disc.
There is one cool song on here from an album I didn’t have which is the Detroit Rock City Movie Soundtrack. The song is “Nothing Can Keep Me From You”. I believe the song played through the end credits and was actually written by Diane Warren and not by Kiss. I enjoyed the track and this is the perfect set for songs like this to be on.
Then we get one of the most famous unreleased tracks, a song called “It’s My Life”. This song is one of the best on the disc and did you know Kiss played this live for the first time on the Kiss Kruise IX which was a month ago. The song dates back to around the time of ‘The Elder’ and was never fully finished. I believe it has all the original band members on this track was supposed to be on Psycho Circus, but as you know, didn’t make it.
The last two tracks are both live. The first one is “Shout it Out Live” from a show in 1996 and on ‘The Greatest Kiss’ album. And then a previously unreleased version of “Rock & Roll All Nite” because that was what we needed (yeah, no!). It was from 1999 and was later released on the ‘Alive! The Millennium Concert’ in 2006. For me, not much a great win as an unreleased track.
This disc had a few highlights for me with “It’s My Life”, “Nothing Can Keep Me From You” and “Domino”, but outside of that it was underwhelmed. There were too many songs from each disc and the Carnival of Song choices kind of sucked. I don’t ever need another version of “Rock & Roll All Nite”…I mean who does. I am going to only give it a 3.0 out of 5.0 Stars as a result. The 3.0 is generous, but I do love “It’s My Life”.
And now that we have all the scores from all 6 reviews, we need to tally up the whole Box Set and come up with an overall score. Here were the scores:
Overall Packaging – 5.0 out of 5.0
Disc One – 5.0 out of 5.0
Disc Two – 4.5 out of 5.0
Disc Three – 3.5 out of 5.0
Disc Four – 4.0 out of 5.0
Disc Five – 3.0 out of 5.0
Overall Average Score – 4.2 out of 5.0 Stars
Check it out and let me know what you think. If you want to go back and read them all, click on the links below:
David Coverdale has really outdone himself with these Super Deluxe Editions Box Sets. First was the ‘1987’ album, then an UnZipped Box Set, then ‘Slide It In’ and now we get the royal treatment on the 1989 album ‘Slip of the Tongue’.
This special edition consists of 6 CDs, 1 DVD, 1 Book, 1 Tour Program replica and 1 Album Cover Poster. And it has over 100 tracks amongst all the discs. Here is everything you get.
Now of course that 100+ tracks is misleading and this set is truly for the ultimate fan. Why? Because the set repeats the songs a lot. Because the set repeats the songs a lot. Yes, I wrote that twice on purpose and yes, I did the same joke on ‘Slide It In’…because its true.
Welcome back to Part 5 of the 6 Part series. We have already talked about the Box Set and its packaging in Part 1 and we have covered Disc 1 and Disc 2 in the set. For those, we got about 20 unreleased tracks between those two. Quite impressive. For Disc Three, we only get 3 unreleased tracks and now for Disc Four we only get 2 unreleased tracks. As a result, I will also talk about the other songs on here to make it a fair representation.
Disc Four is a fun one for me. It covers the Unmasked years of the 80’s. Not the album, Unmasked, the non-makeup years unmasked. The 80’s is where I got back in to the band. My first show was the Lick It Up tour plus I saw the Asylum Tour and the Crazy Nights Tour as well. It was all Kiss all the time (well, when it wasn’t Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Whitesnake). I think this era of Kiss is so overlooked and unfairly so as I love it!! Here’s what you get…
Now here is where Kiss messed up the box set. Yes, I get they had to put Ace’s picture on a disc like they did the other original members, but Ace isn’t on any of these songs…not a one. They should have put Eric Carr on this disc and Ace on the next one. Yes, it would have been out of order, but at least it would fit the timeline.
Towards the end of 1980, Whitesnake released their first live album called ‘Live…in the Heart of the City’. It was released on November 3rd, 1980 and was originally released as a double LP with 2 different shows. The first being from June 1980 at the Hammersmith Odeon in London and the second show as from November 23rd, 1978 at the same place. This review, however, is only on the LP version that I have which is only a single LP version with only the 1980 Hammersmith show and missing one song the original had (“Ready an’ Willing”).
The tour recorded for this one is the ‘Ready ‘n’ Willing’ Tour that features new drummer, former Deep Purple master Ian Paice. And it caught the band at a time when they were starting to finally come into their own. The track list of the single LP is as follows:
Come on
Sweet Talker
Walking in the Shadow of the Blues
Love Hunter
AIn’t No Love in the Heart of the City
Fool For Your Loving
Take Me With You
It is short at only 7 songs, but one is 11 minutes long and 2 are over 6 minutes each and all a blast.
SIDE ONE:
Side one opens with the screamer “Come On” from the ‘Snakebite’ E.P. and what a fantastic way to open the show. A high energy romp that gets everyone on their feet and in to the groove of what is to come. The band is on fire and David sounds in top form. The band glides effortlessly in to “Sweet Talker” from ‘Ready an’ Willing’ with loads of Micky Moody’s slide guitar and let me tell you the guitars on here are killer. The tempo of the song is ramped up to 10 and the fly through this one at warp speed. And don’t forget the Jon Lord keyboard solo in this one that goes right in to Micky’s guitar solo…hell yeah baby! Keep it coming!
The band goes in to two straight ‘Lovehunter’ songs starting with the blues song “Walking in the Shadow of the Blues”. Bernie Marsden takes over the lead on the guitar work in this one accompanied by the great Lord on keyboards. Ian supplying just the right amount of drum fills and as he Neil Murray on bass lay down that all essential groove. But it is the song “Love Hunter” that is the showcase on this side. At 11 minutes, including a Micky Moody showcase of his slide guitar work, the live version takes the song in to so many different directions and is what I love about live shows. David singing here is great as well as he isn’t trying to over sing it and he has seem to found his comfort zone.
SIDE TWO:
“Aint’ No Love in the Heart of the City” opens up Side Two and gives us the name to the album. It is a bluesy track that keeps a slow groove and let me tell you that the guitar work Moody does is sensational. The crowd takes over with Murray’s bass thumping away in the background along with Paice keeping time.
And then we get David’s favorite concert saying “Here’s a Song for You” as he does it a lot. They go in to the classic “Fool For Your Loving” from ‘Ready an’ Willing’. The song is a little punchier then the album version, it actually reminds me a little more of what was to come with the song in the late 80’s and I am okay with that. It is a rocking good song.
The last song is the only song from the album ‘Trouble’, “Take Me With You”. The band is amped up on something as they speed this one up to an exhausting tempo that would leave a lesser band spent. They feed off the energy and everyone gets a moment to shine with Jon Lord’s blistering keyboard solo, Bernie’s raging guitar solo, a little of Murray’s bass, and Moody blasting through some riffs. David and company brought all home on this one.
And that is the album. It is a great live set that I thoroughly enjoyed. Short and sweet and captures some great moments. The band was really cooking at this time and they boiled over some fine work with this release. The first of many live albums to come with Whitesnake and this one started it off right. I will give it a 4.0 out of 5.0 Starsmainly for not giving me the whole show. This one is a must grab if you find it out in the wild. Don’t let it slip past you.
Welcome back to Part 4 of the 6 Part series. We have already talked about the Box Set and its packaging in Part 1 and we have covered Disc 1 and Disc 2 in the set. For those, we got about 20 unreleased tracks between those two. Quite impressive. For Disc Three, we only get 3 unreleased tracks. Rather a big let down after the first two. As a result, I will also talk about the other songs on here to make it a fair representation.
Disc Three covers the years 1976-1982, which were some very rough years for the band. Coming off the fantastic Alive II album, the band released 4 solo albums, Dynasty, Unmasked, The Elder and Creatures of the Night. Creatures being the only album that was truly fantastic…one of their absolute best. The others were not so great. The solo albums were a mixed bag, Dynasty was too Disco, Unmasked was too Pop and I don’t know what the hell The Elder was (I like it better as I am older). Kiss lost a lot of fans during this era and probably for good reason.
Disc Three contains 19 songs covering all the album I mentioned above and then some. Like the albums from this time, the songs for me are a mixed bag as well. It starts off with “Detroit Rock City” and omits the opening intro which is a version I don’t have so I will gladly take it. The next song is “King of the Night Time World” off the Alive II album. This is the only live song off that album which to be honest, I am a little surprised. Instead, we get two of the studio tracks from that album which more than makes up for it as the songs are “Larger Than Life” and “Rocket Ride”, with “Rocket Ride” being one of my favorite Ace Frehley tracks. It rocks out quite nicely.
Welcome back to Part 3 of the 6 Part series. We have already talked about the Box Set and its packaging in Part 1 and we covered Disc 1 in Part 2 which covered the years 1966-1975. That set gave us 12 Unreleased tracks. This one has a lot, but not quite as many. For Disc Two, we get 8 previously unreleased tracks out of the 20 tracks on the disc. And it is those 8 tracks we will spend most of our time here today on. The rest will get covered when I actually do a Kiss series later down the road.
I am sure now you are wondering the what is the track listing for this disc if there are 20 songs and I am going to show you in pictorial form with this picture of the back of the CD case with Paul’s Starchild face covering the whole rear of cover.
The first four tracks on this are taking from the Alive! album which was released in 1975 and since they are previously released will skip over them and get to the three previously unreleased tracks that come up next.
First we get the song “Doncha Hesitate” which was written by Paul Stanley. The song was recorded as a demo and one of the few times the whole band would get together to record a demo. However, there are different stories on when it was recorded. Gene says it was recorded for ‘Dressed to Kill’ when they were trying to come up with more songs. Paul says it was written after ‘Alive!’ and before ‘Destroyer’ which are both after ‘Dressed to Kill’…so not sure who is write on this one. The song is great for a demo as it is very raw and rough around the edges, but it falls flat as an overall song which is probably why it was never used. I do like it though and always great to have unreleased tracks that were not used in any other song.
Next we get the demo of a song called “Mad Dog”. “Mad Dog” was recorded as a demo for the ‘Destroyer’ album along with numerous other songs that Gene had (some of which went on his solo album – not this one). As they were picking through songs, Bob Ezrin would pick pieces of the demos and they would end of making a new song. The riff from this song will sound familiar as it would become the riff in the song “Flaming Youth” on ‘Destroyer’. The song kinda sucks, but it has a great solo included and I love the song “Flaming You” so I actually dug this one a bit for that connection.
“God of Thunder” is a demo and the song was originally written and sung by Paul Stanley. This to me is one of the gems on this Disc because it is so cool to here how Paul envisioned the song. You can see why Bob Ezrin had Paul give it to Gene to sing because the theme, the sonics and the lyrics all scream Gene’s demon character. Paul’s version is a faster tempo and less eerie as the final version, but it is fun and a rocking song.
We go through some songs from ‘Destroyer’ before we get to the next demo which is “Bad, Bad Lovin”. When you hear this one start up, you know it is the demo for the song that would become “Calling Dr. Love”. The verses are pure “Dr. Love”, but the chorus of “Bad, Bad Lovin” is so bad and doesn’t even fit with the feel and vibe of the verses. Re-working it become “Calling Dr. Love” was definitely the way to go. And cool that they put “Calling Dr. Love” as the next song on the album.
“Mr. Speed” is the demo of the song from ‘Rock & Roll Over’. It is not my favorite song to begin with and this does nothing to make up for that. This version has Bob Kulick on guitar and not Ace, but it is a demo so no big deal.
We are going to skip the next batch of songs as they have all been released on albums and we will go to the next unreleased track which is a Soundcheck recording of “I Want You”. It was recorded in August 1977 at the soundcheck at the Los Angeles forum. Being a soundcheck, it is loose and a freaking blast!. I love this song to begin with so any cool version I can get is fine by me. Another favorite of mine on this disc.
The next demo is of the Kiss Klassic “Love Gun”. Paul demoed this in New York with drummer Steve Korff of the band The Planets. Paul played the bass and guitar for the demo. That machine gun drum fill is the heart & soul of the song and was only replicated by Peter Criss as Paul came up with it. The demo was pretty complete and sounds really close to the final version so not much was tweaked on this one.
The last track is the Gene Simmons demo of a song called “Love is Blind”. It is one that was never recorded and it is Gene on all the instruments. And if you listen closely, you can here the click track in the background. It doesn’t sound anything like Kiss, but maybe would have fit on his solo album as it was so diverse. Gene felt it had more of an Eagles feel to it and I can hear that it in the overall sound. A really cool track to me.
And that is all the unreleased tracks. Another great disc and almost as good as the first one, but not quite. The 8 unreleased tracks are fantastic to have in the collection and I think this disc will get almost as much spin time as the first one. Overall, I will score this one a 4.5 out of 5.0 Stars. These first two discs were the majority of the Unreleased tracks from the set. There are only about 10 more over the next three discs so I am going to have to review those slightly different otherwise they will be short reviews. Until then. Enjoy!
Check it out and let me know what you think. If you want to go back and read Part 1, click on the link below:
A couple months after releasing ‘Lovehunter’ in October 1979, the band was back in the studio by December to start recording the follow-up, ‘Ready an’ Willing’. The band finished up recording in February under the hand of returning producer Martin Birch who has handled all the Snake albums up to this point.
By the time they were back in the studio, drummer Duck Dowle was out and former David Coverdale and Jon Lord bandmate, Ian Paice, was in the band. That now made 1/2 of the band as former Deep Purple members. And if I am not mistaken, the press played that up which didn’t quite sit well with a couple of the band members.
The album cover for this one was a much more toned-down cover after the controversy the band received for the naked woman straddling a snake (side note: one of my favorites). This was a simple black & white drawing of the band with the Whitesnake logo. Nothing fancy and quite bland. Now, that wasn’t the only controversy the band had. Their lyrics were blasted as well for their whole “cock rock” style and womanizing. And I am not sure this album would not help them in that matter. Oh well.
The inner album sleeve gave us the songs from each side along with the lyrics. It also included who had each solo on the songs which I love that fact. There was no winding snake from one side to the other, instead we get pictures of the band with Coverdale, Lord and Murray on the front and Marsden, Moody and Paice on the back.
The album was the first one to see any real success for the band. They reached #6 in the UK and actually finally charted in the US at #90 thanks in part to the first single which we will discuss shortly. The band was finally starting to break outside the UK which is what they wanted, but it would still be a few more years before they became one of the top acts in the world.
SIDE ONE:
The band’s first single and first hit outside the UK was the song “Fool For Your Loving”. Yes, Whitesnake fans that came on board in the late 80’s know this song from the album ‘Slip of the Tongue’. However, this was the original and first release of the song which went to #13 in the UK and #53 in the US. The song was written by Marsden (who had the riffs and the verses), Moody (who wrote the bridge) and Coverdale (who did the lyrics). The funny thing about the song is that it was originally written for BB King, however, they soon realized the song was too good to pass up…and they were right.
This version of the song is more bluesy and has a nice groove and not as rocking as the hair metal version, but that is okay. You have Bernie belting out a great solo that is so different than Vai’s version. Since I grew up with the ‘Slip of the Tongue’ version, this version feels like a demo to me and I am actually turn to which one I like more. This fits the sound of the band at this point in their career and the other fits that version of the band. Tough choice…I will let you decide.
The next track is “Sweet Talker” which was only released in the US as a single, but didn’t really do anything. This is another song with rather suggestive lyrics and would not stop the controversy on their womanizing lyrics. As a teenager, this would have been great. it is a fun rocking track and it has Jon Lord delivering something he does best…massive keyboard solos. And I don’t want to leave out the great slide guitar work of Micky Moody, always love his slide guitar. This to me is a classic sounding Whitesnake song and one of my favorites on the album…one of many.
The title track, “Ready an’ Willing”, has such a driving groove to it. The blues feel in David’s vocals and lyrics and the sonics of the song, make it a memorable song and why it was released as the 2nd single. Moody handled the solo which was short and perfect for the song. Although the single didn’t do that well, it is still a beast of a track on the album.
Then we get to “Carry the Load” and I have to say I am not real thrilled with this one. Too generic and falls very flat for me. This song feels more like one of David’s solo songs and could have been on ‘Northwinds’. It feels out of place here.
Another favorite on the album is the song ‘Blindman’ which is a re-work of the song from David’s first solo album called ‘Whitesnake’. In what could be David’s best performance to date as he brings so much more emotion and pain in his delivery, this song is the gem in a album full of them. It has a slow groove and is another blues track which has the band at its best. Bernie’s understated solo was what the song needed. It fit perfectly with the vibe. The song was great on the solo album, but taken to another level here.
SIDE TWO:
First up on Side Two is “Ain’t’ Gonna Cry No More” has David singing along to the acoustic guitar before Jon Lord comes in with some soft sounding keyboards in what is starting out as a beautiful ballad. That is until Ian Paice brings it up a notch with his drums and it turns in to pure rock & roll beast with the help of Micky Moody on the solo. The album is quickly becoming my favorite of the Whitesnake albums so far with songs like this.
“Love Man” is a more traditional blues song with a foot stomping beat and some gritty slide guitar. It was what I know and love as blues. Lyrically, it is pure and utter cheese and David delivers it as such, however, I kinda like it. It grabs you and pulls you in whether you want to or not.
“Black and Blue” feels like you are at a honky tonk with the whole live, bar-band feel to it including some piano playing by Jon Lord. Adding the cheering bar crowd to the mix made it feel right at home in the bar. It is a fun, good time track.
And the album ends with “She’s a Woman”, which opens with Lord on the keyboards and then gets turned up a notch when the drums and guitar riffs kick in. Now the highlight is that Jon Lord turns in the best solo of the album. He goes to town and takes you on a magical keyboard journey. Although not the best song on the album, it highlights Lord and that is good enough for me.
Track Listing:
Fool For Your Loving – Keeper
Sweet Talker – Keeper
Ready an’ Willing – Keeper
Carry Your Load – Delete
Blindman – Keeper
Ain’t Gonna Cry No More – Keeper
Love Man – Keeper
Black and Blue – Keeper
She’s a Woman – Keeper
The track is a wonderful 8 out of 9 tracks are keepers or 89%. The songs are the strongest yet of the Whitesnake albums so far. There are some Essential Whitesnake songs on here, more so than the others and this album gets better with every listen. The album was missing some dual guitar solos with Marsden and Moody which I think adds to the songs. The album was also lacking a Bernie Marsden lead vocal song…okay, it really isn’t missing that I guess. Overall, this is a killer album and I will rate it a 4.0 out of 5.0 Stars. As much as I love it, there are some I like better but this is near the top.
Up next…Whitesnake – ‘Live…in the Heart of the City’.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 