My Sunday Song – “Private Parts (Feat. James Michael)” by Halestorm

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For My Sunday Song #236, we are going to dig deep in to the song “Private Parts” by Halestorm. The song features Sixx A.M. lead singer James Michael and is off the band’s 2012 album ‘The Strange Case of…’. The album wasn’t a single, hell, it wasn’t even on the main album. The song was only on the Deluxe Edition of the album. Since I am a fan of James, this song really stood out for me and quickly became a fan.

The song is not a sexual song at all as you might expect with a song called “Private Parts”. No, the song is about something so much deeper. It is about a couple that has been together, but she is having trouble getting him to open up. She wants him to let her. Communicate. Be there in the moment. She wants him to show her his private parts…she wants what is inside his heart. She feels like she has done something wrong and is starting to feel like their love isn’t real. He loves her, but for some reason he can’t talk about it. It is actually quite beautifully written and played out in the song as you get the She said/He said approach to the lyrics.

The song opens and has a power ballad feel to it. It only has a piano playing at a slow tempo accompanying the vocals. Then the chorus explodes with a more rocking track. I love how Lzzy sings a line and James answers back as you get to see the conversation played out in the song. His voice compliments hers quite nicely. The song has a great melody and is so catchy it sweeps you up and takes you along for the ride. I find it to be such a beautiful song and nice to see the softer side of the band.

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You Pick It! – Which Album to Review in March?

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You, my reader, are going to pick an album for me to review each month.  It is really simple…first, I will give you 5 albums to choose from and second, you will tell me which one of those you would like to see reviewed on the site.  See…simple!

There are a few simple rules I have put in to place in my selections.  They are…

  • One has to be a new release (within the last month)
  • One has to be one I have never heard before (new releases don’t count for this one)
  • One has to be from a genre I don’t normally listen to at all or very often
  • And the last two are choices from my collection that I haven’t reviewed before

What are the 5 albums you ask?  Funny you should ask because I have those right here…

New Release – Durbin – ‘The Beast Awakens

Never Heard Before – Joni Mitchell – ‘Blue’

Not My Normal Genre – Outkast – ‘Stankonia’

From My Collection – Ozzy Osbourne – ‘Bark at the Moon’

From My Collection – Phil Collins – ‘Face Value’

Let me know which one you would like to see and sometime in March, I will post a review of the album that gets the most votes. You have one week to decide and from there I will start listening to the album and do a review.

Thanks for participating!!

Friday New Releases – February 19, 2021

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Happy Friday and thank goodness we have reached another weekend. We have a bunch more new releases for you this week, but for me there is only one I have bought and I am interested in this go ’round. I have marked it in Blue and it is the first one on the list. There are a ton of rock, metal, alternative and hopefully there is something that fits your musical taste. Tell me what you want to hear and/or buy and what I might have missed on the list as it is not all inclusive. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

  • 917JSj4ZgrL._SX522_  Whitesnake – The Blues Album (2020 Remix) – (Rhino Entertainment): The final Coverdale release in the Red, White & Blue Series. The Red was Love, White was Rock and Blue is well the Blues. These are all Whitesnake songs that have been remixed for these releases and this one will be those songs that were a little more blues tinged in either style or theme. And the vinyl is well, it is Blue…did you think it would be some other color.
  • 91lyq4eD6LL._SX522_  Ricky Warwick – When Life was Hard & Fast – (Nuclear Blast) – Shows it is the 18th for a release date, but close enough
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Kiss – ‘Unplugged’ (1996) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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Welcome back to Kiss Review Series and this time around we will discuss the album ‘Unplugged’ or is it ‘MTV Unplugged’, I wasn’t really sure. I stuck with ‘Unplugged’ as that is what it says on the spine of the vinyl cover. But it was recorded for MTV so didn’t know the right way to label this post. But enough of that garbage, let us get back to the Kisstory.

Kiss seemed in no hurry to do an album. It had been several years since ‘Revenge’. They have been putting out product as we have reviewed it, but yet no studio album. And with this review, still no studio album. In 1995, the band set out and did these Convention Tours as around this time, Kiss Konventions had started popping up. Kiss would go play these and they were all done as acoustic performances. They would even get some special guests to join them and one time Peter Criss showed up and jumped on stage with them. Kiss started to play lesser known songs at the audience requests and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Well, around that time MTV came a calling and asked if they wanted to do an episode of MTV Unplugged and the band agreed.

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Queen – ‘Queen’ (1973) – Album Review (The Studio Album Series)

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Welcome to the new series on 2 Loud 2 Old Music. We are going to go through all the Studio Albums for the band Queen. And to do this, we are using the 40th Anniversary 2011 Remastered CDs as our source as I picked up the 3 Volume Box Set for Christmas. And with any good series, we will start with their debut album and work our way through all the studio albums in chronological order. I hope you enjoy this new series and note, they won’t be coming weekly like the Kiss Series is doing, these will come as I can get to them and my goal is to be done by the end of the year. With only 15 reviews, I think I can meet that goal.

We aren’t going to go through a detail history lesson of the band as this series focus is the studio albums only. But we will give you a quick rundown of their beginnings. Brian May and Roger Taylor were in a band called Smile in the late 60’s. Freddie Bulsara was a big fan of the band and asked to join the band as lead singer. May of course didn’t think their current lead singer, Tim Staffell would give up that role. Well, eventually he did as he wanted to go in a different direction than what Smile was doing. Freddie joined the band and they changed their name to Queen and Freddie changed his name to Freddie Mercury due to a line in their song “My Fairy King”. This was around 1970. Then in Feburary 1971, bass player John Deacon joined the band and Queen was ready to go.

Continue reading “Queen – ‘Queen’ (1973) – Album Review (The Studio Album Series)” →

Queensryche – “Eyes of a Stranger” – 12″ Single (Limited Edition Gatefold: Video Story Board)

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When I hit up Noble Records for the big metal collection he was selling, it wasn’t all Def Leppard Singles I purchased. There was a Queensryche in there as well and it was a single from my favorite album ‘Operation: Mindcrime’. The single was for the song “Eyes of A Stranger” which was only moderately successful as it only reached #35 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. It was played on MTV, but for me it was played constantly as that album was on repeat for most of 1988 and has been played every year (multiple times a year) ever since.

For those that don’t know, ‘Operation: Mindcrime’ was a concept album and this song, “Eyes of a Stranger” was the final track on the album and a culmination of the whole album story. This 12″ Single is a Limited Edition Gatefold that contains a Video Story Board of the video shot for the song. The gatefold has pictures from the video and sums up the story as seen below.

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You Picked It!! – The Velvet Underground & Nico – ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ – Album Review

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Alright…You Picked It! And this one wasn’t really close. The one you picked was The Velvet Underground & Nico.  The votes were as follows:

  1. The Velvet Underground – ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ – 8 votes
  2. ZZ Top – ‘Eliminator’ – 4 votes
  3. The Rolling Stones – ‘Tattoo You” – 3 votes
  4. Wig Wam – ‘Never Say Die’ – 3 votes
  5. Chris Stapleton – ‘Starting Over’ – 1 Vote

Thanks to all for participating.  The March choices will be up on Saturday!

The Velvet Underground & Nico – ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967):

If I thought the last album was a little daunting to review with The Beach Boys ‘Pet Sounds’, this one is just as daunting a task. This has also been called one of the greatest albums of all time and one of the most influential albums as well. Punk, grunge and numerous other genres all owe a tip of the hat to this album. With ‘Pet Sounds’, I found the album was really good, but I didn’t think it was one of the best ever although “God Only Knows” is one of the best songs. So how will this one fare? I will come out and just say it, I love this album! I mean this thing far exceeded any expectations especially since it has been labeled as art pop and experimental rock. I wasn’t sure what to expect and this wasn’t it. I have to say this thing kind of blew me away.

First up, what an awesome band. The Velvet Underground is the great Lou Reed and John Cale as well as Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker. And then you throw the German singer, Nico, in the mix and not a bad bunch of people to have sitting around playing music. And the strange part of the album is that Andy Warhol produced it. Andy does art, I didn’t realize he produced as well. The album came out on March 12, 1967 and sounds like a product of its time as you can tell it is an album of the 60’s, but there is so much more.

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My Sunday Song – “Amen” by Halestorm

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For My Sunday Song #235, we are going to look at the song “Amen” by Halestorm off their 2015 album ‘Into the Wild Life’. The song was released as the second single and went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock tracks, but didn’t chart on the Top 40 because this is not a Top 40 song. It was written by Lzzy Hale, Joe Hottinger and Scott Stevens (who we’ve seen a lot so far on these songs as I seem to gravitate to his songs unknowingly).

The song is real simple lyrically. It is about doing whatever the fuck you want, but owning it at the same time which you have to if you going to have that attitude. According to Lzzy in a Kerrang interview, the idea for the song came from a Tweet she did that stated…‘This is my life, my love, my sex, my drug, my lust.’… Her friend showed that tweet back to her and told that she needed to turn that in to a song and well, she did just that.

The song was actually recorded in a church, but written prior to knowing they were going to do that. Ironically enough, the song is done in a preaching, church style vocal delivery and it is backed up with that vibe musically as well. It isn’t the heaviest song they have done, but it is a rocker and has short guitar solo that is fitting for the song. The whole song has a Big F.U. feel to it which shows the band is doing things their way and they don’t care what you think. I think we all feel that way at one time or another.

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Friday New Releases – February 12, 2021

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The last couple of weeks for me haven’t been big on releases. This week changes all that. There are so many I want to check out that it might take a whole week to get through them all. My choices are highlighted in Blue. Now before we go on, lets take a look at something in the list below. Frontiers Records has not 1 or 2 or even 5, they have at least 6 albums coming out this week (could be more, I only put in 6). That is one label releasing that many albums on one day. Kind of shocking. If I was an artist on that label, I would ask how the label can market that many releases at one time. Seems unfair to the releases. And a lot of the label’s albums are similar type of music. There is no way, the public can buy them all, especially in today’s environment. I am not sure I understand their strategy. Enough about that. What albums are you most eager to hear? Let me know what you want and what I may have missed. Thanks and have a great weekend.

  • A1ZVtvdzNFL._SX522_  The Pretty Reckless – Death by Rock And Roll – (Fearless Records): This hard rock band, fronted by Taylor Momsen, is back with another kick ass release. At least I hope it will be kick ass. Taylor has a great rock voice and I have been a fan of her vocals and band since they came out years ago. Can’t wait to dive in to this one.
  • 71R8bsymJzL._SX522_  Durbin – The Beast Awakens – (Frontiers Records): James Durbin has returned after a short stint with Quiet Riot. Glad to see him on his own again. He has brought some heavy hitting friends along and this one is supposed to be balls to the wall heavy and should be right up his alley. Who’da think this boy from American Idol would still be hanging around this long. Good on him.
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Kiss – Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved (1994) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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We are now in 1994 and it has been almost 2 years since the band’s last studio album. At this point in the timeline, there is no work being done on a new album either. Kiss was in limbo to some degree. But the motors were turning and the band thought to celebrate their 20 years in music, they would do a Tribute album which would be performed by artist that were big at the time of 1994. Tribute albums were big in the early 90’s as there a ton, so this was not an original idea by the band. I believe they had run out of original ideas years earlier.

The band had over 100 bands that wanted to do songs including such acts as Sir Mix A Lot and Smashing Pumpkins. Hell, even Kurt Cobain and The Melvins did a song together, but sadly it came in too late to be included on the album. They had settled on 12 acts to perform 12 Kiss Klassics…sorry Classics. These song wouldn’t be straight up renditions as each band was allowed to do something different to the songs and make it special in their own way.

Before we get to the music, let us talk about the packaging a little. Now, if you notice the cover art, the make-up for Ace isn’t shown and that is because Kiss didn’t own Ace’s make-up design. At this time, Ace still owned it. The band didn’t get permission from the right people in time for the album’s release so that is why it is absent. Instead, you get Paul’s original design with the bandit style make-up on the little boy.

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