Category: Rock

Cheap Trick – ‘Love to Rock’ (1988) – Album Review (the Cheap Trick Collection Series)

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Back in the 80’s, record companies would put out compilations on cassette only. They weren’t really official band releases, but the labels did it anyway. While I was at a record show, I found this tape by Cheap Trick that I had never seen before. It was a CBS Special Product and it was only available on cassette. It is called “Love to Rock” and it is a short compilation of Cheap Trick songs from 1977 up to the 80’s. This was released back in 1988 and I am sure was to capitalize on the band’s new popularity with their new hit “The Flame”, which isn’t on here by the way.

For fun, let’s go through the track list and see what they gave us. Not a bade tracklist, but might not be one I would’ve chosen, but what I do know, I’m not a suit at a record company that has no idea what the buying public really wants.

Side One kicks off with “I Want You To Want Me” from the 1977 album ‘In Color’. The first single and one of their most well-known songs is up next. “I Want You To Want Me” did nothing as a single and didn’t chart, not until it was released as a single off Budokan and we will talk about that in a couple reviews. This version doesn’t have the energy as the live version, but doesn’t mean it isn’t good. The song is a real treat as it is so playful and a finger-snapping good time. There is a some cool guitar picking with almost a country twang and a piano interlude that is fast and frenzied. The song might like the power of the live version, but you can’t deny its whimsical stylings.

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Bon Jovi – “I Believe” (1993) – 7″ Single (The Bon Jovi Collection Series)

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The first track on the album, ‘Keep the Faith’ was “I Believe” which was also the fifth single and released in the UK Where it went to #11. The song was written solely by Jon Bon Jovi and was released on September 20, 1993. The single is not the album track, but the single mix down by Bob Clearmountain thus the name Clearmountain Mix. The B-Side of this UK version of the single is a live version of the song. So, both versions on here are not really album tracks.

The song is about hope. Believing in yourself to fulfill your hopes and dreams. The main protagonist is disillusioned by the world, but yet they still have things they want to do and accomplish. They need to look from within to find the power to still believe in themselves. A pretty great, positive message. Jon really pushes himself on this song and album to be a better songwriter and I think he succeeds.

SIDE 1:

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My Sunday Song – “Long Way to Neverland” by Headstones

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For My Sunday Song #380, we are to the final song of 10 song set of Deke’s Choices. This time around we are tackling “Long Way to Neverland” by Headstones. Headstones are yet another Canadian band out of Kingston and they have a major punk influence. The song is off their 2013 album ‘Love + Fury’ and was written by the band. The song was the 2nd single off the album and went to #6 on the Canadian Rock/Alt chart.

The song was written by the band which consist of Hugh Dillon, Trent Carr, Tim White and Dale Harrison. The lyrics to “Long Way to Neverland” are rather confusing to me. The lyrics are introspective while at the same time it is giving you the power. Basically, I get out of it that it wants to give you the power to be yourself, to stay true to oneself. Don’t give in to pressures by either your peers or by society. Remain strong when confronted by those that don’t agree with you. “To Thine Own Self Be True” or something like that. But I could be way off base here because he also is sitting there getting stoned and just ignoring everything.

There is a Lou Reed vibe to the opening as lead singer, Hugh Dillon, speaks it more in that Lou Reed style. It is really cool. The guitars have a grunge edge to them and the harmonica really adds a punch to it. The song has a ton of attitude and bite and I am really digging the dangerous feel to it. A band I had never heard of before this, but damn I’m glad I know it now. In under 3 minutes waste no time in making you feel it and want to re-live the experience over and over. A brilliant piece of music.

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Friday New Releases – September 29, 2023

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The end of another month has arrived and only 3 more to go this year. Crazy how time flies. One way to enjoy the time flying by is listening to new music and we have another large batch of new releases for you this week. There are almost 50 this time around. There are a handful I want to check out, don’t know if I’ll buy, but I’ll listen like KK’s Priest, Black Stone Cherry and even Red…and probably Green Day’s Dookie Deluxe Set…maybe I’ll buy that one, it looks cool. Let me know what you want to hear this week. I am sure a lot of you might like Ed Sheeran’s new one or maybe even LANY as I’m sure those will be pretty popular this week. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great weekend.

  • 71ToNBoKzzL._AC_UY436_FMwebp_QL65_  KK’s Priest – The Sinner Rides Again – (Napalm Records)
  • 81yvjyAyh5L._AC_UY436_FMwebp_QL65_  Black Stone Cherry – Screamin’ at the Sky – (Mascot Label Group)
  • Red – Rated R – (Red Entertainment / The Fuel Music)
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September 2023 Purchases – Vinyl & CDs

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Welcome to the monthly round-up as we go through the purchases here at 2 Loud 2 Old Music for September 2023. It was another good month for vinyl and CDs, but that was it. Nothing out of the ordinary this month like Cassettes, 8-Tracks or even books. Strictly vinyl and CDs which I won’t complain about because that is enough. The month started out with a couple new releases that came out at the end of August, but didn’t arrive until after the August post was done. I picked the new albums for both Eclipse and H.E.A.T. and both are great…

Then during Labor Day weekend, my wife and I had a kid free weekend and we went out to 2nd & Charles so she could look for books. I, of course, took advantage of the Buy 2 Get 2 Free in the used CD section where I picked up 10 CDs. Two of them were actually still sealed (Lifehouse and Halestorm)!! I picked up a handful of Live including their debut E.P., some Wallflowers and a great Pearl Jam live CD and as Jimmy Buffett passed away, I grabbed his greatest hits in memory of him.

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Def Leppard – ‘On Through The Night’ (1980) – Album Review (the Def Leppard Collection Series)

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The Def Leppard E.P. from 1979, sold really well and saw the band’s popularity rise heavily in their home country of the U.K. The Union Jack was their friend, but that was soon about to change. With the release of their debut album, shouts were coming from the media that Def Leppard were sell-outs and trying to pander to the American public especially with a song called “Hello America” and the fact that they toured way more in the U.S. then they did anywhere else. As a result of those shouts, they were abused and heckled and bombarded with bottles of piss at the Reading Festival, but to be fair a lot of bands were abused during that festival.

Def Leppard were one of the first bands on this ride called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which included the likes of Iron Maiden, Saxon, Tigers of Pan Tang and many more. Their sound was more raw, definitely more heavy and yet a little more polished then some of the other bands. There was no denying that this young gang of boys with an average age of 18, were ready to rock America and the World. The band consisted of singer Joe Elliott, guitarists Steve Clark and Pete Willis, bassist Rick Savage and the Thunder God himself, Rick Allen who was the tender age of 16 when the album came out.

The album was produced by Colonel Tom Allen who you might know from producing acts like Judas Priest and engineer on albums from Black Sabbath. He helped craft a really solid and exciting debut album which saw the light of day March 14, 1980. The album saw three singles with only 2 charting in the UK, but the album did sell over a million copies over time thanks to their big albums ‘Pyromania’ and ‘Hysteria’ I am sure. Through the success of the album and the touring, they band caught the eye of producer, Robert John “Mutt” Lange. The man saw something special and these young lads and would change their world forever.

I remember growing up and seeing this album in my brothers collection and I remember him seeing them live and telling me how great they were. So I grabbed this album and listened to it a lot. I had a strange fascination with it using it for two projects in school. One was a paper in English which I talked about the song “Wasted”. That paper sucked and I was lucky to walk away with a “C” when it probably deserved and “F”. The second was for Art Class when I drew the album cover. I still have the original album on vinyl and the cover is all marked up since I drew lines on it to help with my actual drawing. It is rough. Not the drawing, it looks great and is below…

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Bon Jovi – ‘Keep The Faith’ (1992) – Album Review (The Bon Jovi Collection Series)

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After 16 months of touring for ‘New Jersey’, the band was simply exhausted. Without so much as a goodbye, the band members went home and did their own things for awhile. Jon Bon Jovi became real disillusioned with the music “business” so he fired everyone from management to advisers to even agents (which was Doc McGhee). Jon took control. And in October 1991, he brought the boys back together down in St. Thomas in the Caribbean where the band hashed out their issues and decided it was time to work again.

In January 1992, the band headed back to Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, Canada to start work on their fifth album. They tried to get Bruce Fairbairn back to produce, but he was busy with a little band from Boston called Aerosmith and their smash album ‘Get a Grip’. So, they got the next best thing, Bob Rock, who engineered their last two albums with Bruce so he was taught very well. They worked on the album through August of that year and wrote/recorded over 30 songs for the album. Of which, 12 made it and a couple were used for various bonus tracks whether in Japan or Australia.

Things had changed significantly since their last album. Some thing called Grunge had taken over and even Rap was growing in popularity. But the boys ignored all that, they also ignored their old sound which was full of cliches. Instead, the focused on righting real songs about more serious topics. Now, not all the songs were that way, but enough were that we got a band that sounded more mature, more focused and more serious.

The album came out on November 3, 1992 and would spawn six singles – four in the U.S. and two around the world. The album would chart at #5 in the U.S., #1 in the UK and high on so many charts around the world. It would sell over 8 million copies worldwide and have 3 Top 40 hits. Bon Jovi was back and in a big way. They were actually more popular around the world then in their home country. Why did this album do so well, let’s dig in to the songs and see.

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My Sunday Song – “Let It Ride” by Big Sugar

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For My Sunday Song #379, we are talking about “Let it Ride” and not the BTO version, but the cover by Big Sugar. Deke’s choice is another Canadian band, but he is mixing it up by picking a cover song. The song is off this Toronto band’s 1998 album ‘Heated’ which went platinum in Canada with over 100,000 album sold.

The song has a great story with it as it was inspired by a bus touring traffic incident with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. While driving from one town to the next, the band got boxed in between some 18 -Wheelers and when the trucks and the bus pulled over at the next rest stop, they actually confronted the truck drivers. And truck drivers being as cool as they normally are, they told the band to basically calm down and let it ride. The song itself is about a guy that apparently has lied to his girl and he is telling her to forget about and move on…yeah…I am sure that went over well.

Big Sugar has taken this song and really changed it up. The guitars don’t sound like this 70’s hit did, no. They brought some crunchy guitars and then there is almost a swagger to it with a reggae vibe. The vocals aren’t full of harmonies, now they have a darker edge that only Gordie Johnson can do. They have brought the song in to the 21st Century in a big way. Heck, they even added another 1:20 to the song with more guitars and well more everything. A totally different vibe, they made it their own song. Which I like to see they put in a lot of effort thinking how they wanted to present this song.

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Friday New Releases – September 22, 2023

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As Fall starts tomorrow and temperatures start to cool down, we bring another list of new releases and for me things have cooled down. As there have been a bunch of releases this month that I have bought so it is nice to have an off week. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good releases as you have Doja Cat this week which will probably be one of the biggest releases. Let me know what you want to hear this week or what we may have missed. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

  • Doja Cat – Scarlet – (Kemosabe Records / RCA Records)
  • Wolves at the Gate – Lost in Translation – (Solid State Records)
  • 71ebi9MvihL._AC_UY436_FMwebp_QL65_  Paul Rodgers – Midnight Rose – (Heartstar Music / Sun Label Group)
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Girl – ‘Sheer Greed’ (1980) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

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When planning the Def Leppard Collection Series, I thought it would be fun to include what I call Def Leppard Adjacent albums. That would be any side projects or bands the members of Leppard have been in that I have in my collection. First up is an interesting one in that it is the band Girl which features future Def Leppard guitarists, Phil Collen. What is cool about it for me is that Girl’s debut and Def Leppard’s debut albums came out one month apart in the year of 1980. It was a battle of two new British bands and we know who comes out on top. But which album was better? Before we get in to that, lets talk about the band.

The band was formed in 1979 by Phil Lewis, Phil Collen, Gerry Laffy, Jonathon Trevisick and Mark MeGary. Two names should be easily recognizable as we know Phil Collen from Leppard, but Phil Lewis went on to fame with a Sunset Strip band in 1987 called L.A. Guns. The band quickly replaced two members of the band as Trevsicik was out and Dave Gaynor was in on drums and then MeGary was out with Simon Laffy on bass and yes, Simon is Gerry’s brother.

The band quickly signed with Jet Records and in no time had an album out called ‘Sheer Greed’. The debut came out in January 1980…that is pretty fast after just forming in 1979. Not sure if they paid their dues as they didn’t spend years grinding it out in clubs to finally get a record deal. No, they got it right out of the gate…bam!

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was sweeping the nation, but the androgynous glamminess of Girl was a little misunderstood, however they make a few waves, just nothing big you could surf off of. They weren’t metal, but they were hard enough with even a little punk side to them with some dashes of reggae thrown in for good measure. ‘Sheer Greed’ peaked at #33 and its debut single hit #50. They didn’t have massive success, but they made some waves. Many years after the band split, Phil Collen and Simon Laffy would be in another band together called Man Raze…we will get to it in due time.

The version of the album I have in my collection is a Gold Stamped Promo. It even has “Demonstration Not For Sale” on the vinyl label. It also still has the inner sleeve with the song lyrics. There is something about picking up a promo that I do love. Maybe because it was played by a Radio Station or whatever, but it is cool to know this was handed out by the record label to specific locations. Enough about that, let’s get to the music.

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