Welcome to Friday New Releases and are there some huge releases this week. Man, what a good week. For me, the biggest is the new solo album from Scott Stapp who I have become a big fan of as his solo albums are phenomenal!! But that isn’t all! Not even close. We get the brand new Black Crowes album, Justin Timberlake and Kasey Musgraves albums. I have a lot of listening to do now as that is 4 releases I am dying to stream and/or buy. 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 great weekend.
Scott Stapp – Higher Power – (Napalm Records)
The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards – (Silver Arrow Records)
Justin Timberlake – Everything I Thought It Was – (RCA Records)
Def Leppard had the biggest selling album of their career. A tour that lasted for 227 dates throughout the world and to commemorate that achievement, they released the final piece to the “Hysteria” puzzle with ‘In the Round, In Your Face’ (according to the back cover of the CD Video I have (or Laserdisc). I had picked this up when I purchased a Hysteria Tour Book from a guy in Hawaii. For some reason, he included this and was charging the same price as everybody else that was only selling a Tour Book. So, I had to jump on that. And what a cool piece it is even though I have no way of playing it. But I also had the VHS at one time, now I have the DVD collection that holds both ‘Historia’ and ‘In the Round, In Your Face’ all on one disc.
The video contains a full Def Leppard live show at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado and additional footage from shows at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia, compiled from footage shot during the band’s 1987/1988 US Hysteria World Tour. Considering I was at at least one of those Atlanta shows, I could be in there somewhere (I never found myself) but it is cool to have this in the collection. I think most of this is from the Denver so the chances are slim you would find me at all in the Atlanta pieces. Apparently, the songs “Don’t Shoot Shotgun”, “Let It Go”, “Tear It Down” and “Travelin’ Band” were performed and recorded but did not make the VHS or DVD. I guess they were only budgeted for a certain amount of time on the release.
The video opens with the Lunar Mix of “Rocket” playing and some behind the scenes, pre-concert footage. We then get the Dirty Harry segment and Joe shouts out “I Said Welcome to My Show” and the guitars go nuts with riffs for “Stagefright”, one of the band’s best songs to open the show. But the curtain doesn’t drop. I remember when I saw the first of 3 shows on this tour, I thought something was wrong and the curtain didn’t fall for some reason. I then figured out they wait until after the first verse before dropping the curtain and then pandemonium set in as the crowd goes nuts and the band runs around all around the stage set up in the round so there are four front rows. They are in your face…wait, that is why they called the video that…I get it now!! Kidding, I knew that already.
The quickly race through the song and go in to “Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)” from ‘Pyromania’. Now, let me get right on this topic before we go further. The setlist is made up basically songs from ‘Pyromania’ (7) and ‘Hysteria’ (6) with only one from the ‘High ‘N Dry’ and that is it. Nothing from the first album. I mean we are only 4 albums in so why nothing from ‘On Through the Night’…baffling. Soapbox done. After some boob flashes, a killer solo, they go in “Women”, the first from ‘Hysteria’ and the first single here in the States. Phil goes in to the opening riff after some clever remarks from Joe. It is strange seeing Phil with his shirt on and hair. Speaking of hair, Joe’s mullet might the best mullet ever. While watching, you realize these guys must be exhausted by the end because with four front rows, they are constantly moving around, except for Rick Allen who sits center stage (that revolves) and bangs those drums.
In 2014, Kiss was celebrating their 40th Anniversary. To celebrate they did a huge tour with none other than Def Leppard. I caught the show in Charlotte, North Carolina with Leppard opening and I will admit that Def Leppard blew Kiss off the stage, but that is another story. Kiss decided to celebrate with another Greatest Hits compilation titled ‘Kiss 40’. It was released on May 23, 2014 and contained one song from every Kiss release giving them 40 tracks…well, 36 tracks and they stuck 4 other tracks on their for good measure and put out on a 2 CD set.
In Japan only, there was another release of Kiss 40 that was only a single disc edition. It had only 20 tracks and a few different ones then you got on the 2 Disc Set. And for that reason you had to have both sets. And being a Japanese Edition, you also got an OBI strip but this one was bigger as it actually covered the entire back of the CD case as well. The set also included a booklet in both English and Japanese with the lyrics to the songs. There is a new song on the set called “Samurai Son” that was done with the Japanese girl band Momoiro Clover Z and as a result there is a little picture card of the band with Kiss. The last thing is the CD booklet itself which is full of bright, vivid color pictures of the band from throughout the years. It includes every member of the band.
The opening track is “Samurai Son (U.S. Mix)” with the band Momoiro Clover Z. This song sounds like nothing you have heard before with Kiss…well except for Paul’s vocals sound like Kiss. The drums are immense, Momoiro Clover Z does some of the backing vocals and even Gene joins in as well. It is a modern sounding rock song and I think it sounds really cool. Paul hasn’t sounded better, the Japanese sounding drums are cool and there is killer riff included. The song is worth the price of admission here easily.
This week we go we back to the very beginning for me when I fell in love with my first band…KISS!!! When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me bing one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
We go through my Kiss albums on vinyl, but instead of doing all of them, we will go from the debut up until Creatures of the Night. We will save the rest for another show. I am still missing some of the more rare pieces, but I have a couple cool extras in this one.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 11th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
We are in the year 2004 and Bon Jovi has now been around for 20 Years at this point. To celebrate their 20th Anniversary, they released a really cool box set of mostly unreleased tunes and a lot of little extras. The Box Set is a collection of 50 songs spread over 4 CDs, 38 of which had never been released. The others were songs from soundtracks, remixes and/or B-Sides. This was a band dumping everything sitting by the wayside in to one set and I applaud them for that. Us diehard fans love this kind of stuff. And if that wasn’t enough, if you have the Japanese Edition, which i do, you get another CD of B-Sides and Japanese Bonus Tracks. That is another 10 songs.
The Box Set is titled ‘100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong’ which is a play on the 1959 compilation of Elvis Presley’s album ‘50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong’ and you will see they copied the cover pretty well…
This is a lot of music to absorb and we won’t be absorbing it here. Nope. I’m going to go through each and every CD, track by track over 5 more posts. That is why this is Part 1 of 6. Here we are going to talk about what is included in the set. And as I mentioned, I have the Japanese Edition of the box set which comes with a lot of different things. Let’s take a look and see what we get…
For My Sunday Song #403, Harrison has chosen a song from one of his favorite singers, Blaze Bayley. The song is “1633” off his 2010 album, ‘Promise And Terror’. The song wasn’t a single, but is a main force to the album. Blaze wrote the song and is the lead singer. If you don’t know Blaze, he was on Wolfsbane and for short time, he was lead singer to Iron Maiden. If it wasn’t for Harrison, I don’t think I would’ve ever given Blaze much thought, but I have found a few things I like including this song.
The song appears to be about Galileo who believed in Copernicus’ theory that the earth was not the center of the universe and it in fact revolved around the Sun. In 1633, The Catholic Church condemned and put Galileo on trial for this viewpoint. According to the song, Galileo’s sight and abilities were given to him by God so how is it offensive to God. I love a song that educates as well as entertains.
The song starts off with a beast of a bass line and that bass line is the driving force of the whole song. The guitars are heavy and nasty and deliver a driving rhythm. Blaze’s vocals are solid and I like the way he handles that chorus. The song can be a little repetitive, but it doesn’t get bothersome. In fact, it makes it a little catchy and after a few listens, you are all in. The end brings the bass back hard and heavy and the guitars and drums become explosive. Blaze does just that and blazes through the lyrics, almost rapping to a point. Then more guitar work to take us out. A real beast of a song.
This week is going to be an awesome week. Why? Because the new Judas Priest album, ‘Invincible Shield’ is out. My Target Deluxe Edition is on its way and can’t wait to spin it!! I’m also waiting on the 50th Anniversary Alice Cooper ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ album. I might check out the Norah Jones release too. For a lot of other people, I am sure the Ariana Grande new one will be a popular choice. And there some George Lynch fans out there (not me) who will want the new The End Machine album. 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.
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield – (Sony Music)
Ariana Grande – Eternal Sunshine – (Republic Records)
Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (50th Anniversary) – (Warner Records)
In 1988, Def Leppard was flying high. They were at the top of their game, MTV was blasting all their videos all day long. Now was a perfect time to compile all their music videos together in one place and sell it to the buying hungry public on VHS. The video was called ‘Historia’ and it was released on July 5, 1988 and went on to sell over 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone making it a double platinum release. Back in the day, I bought this up on VHS the day it came out. Ran home, popped it in and sat back and enjoyed all the videos of the band from the ‘On Through the Night’ album up to ‘Hysteria’. It was 17 videos of pure Leppard magic. Oops, it was 18 videos actually on the VHS tape because “Love Bites” was added as a bonus and not listed.
Then in 2001, in the DVD era, Def Leppard released ‘Historia’ again except this time as a 2 video set and released with ‘In the Round, In Your Face’ live concert. And if that wasn’t enough, they updated with 5 more videos from the album ‘Slang’ and ‘Euphoria’. And of course, I went and bought this as well. The bad news is, I don’t have the VHS tape anymore as I didn’t think I’d need it anymore which I don’t, but would still be cool to have in the collection though.
The video kicks off with the some old timey style silent film like music and a some openings notes about the videos. Then it goes in to the only video from ‘On Through the Night’ with the video for “Hello America”. It was full of special video effects and why was the drum set out front??? Man, they all looked so young. Really great to see this early promotional video from Top of the Pops. Then we get three more promotional videos all from ‘High & Dry’. We get “Let It Go”, “High & Dry” and “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak (Version 1 with Pete Willis)”. All three were shot on the same day and done with live performances. I remember when I first saw these videos I thought they were the coolest as they looked so cool up there on the stage rocking out. And we get the first glimpse of the Union Jack shorts Rick Allen would help make famous.
Whenever I got to Repo Records, especially on Record Store Day, I tend to find Bootlegs while waiting in line. I think he does it on purpose knowing I’m a sucker for those things (not true as he doesn’t know me from Adam). The last few trips have been very successful and this last trip was no exception. This time I found another Van Halen Bootleg and this one was called ‘Zero Demos’ and it is a collection of the demos produced by Gene Simmons way back in 1976. I have always wanted to hear and have those demos and now I do.
You probably have already heard the story of Gene Simmons involvement in Van Halen so I won’t go in to too much detail. Gene saw them play and fell in love with them. He took them under his demonic wing and took the band in to the studio and they recorded a 10 song demo tape that Gene shopped around to try and get them a deal. He was unable to and his demands with Kiss were huge, so he ripped up the contract and let them find their own way which they did and the rest is history. During this time, Gene had Eddie and Alex help with some demos for Kiss including “Got Love for Sale”, “Christine Sixteen” and “Tunnel of Love” which were long in demand and I have copies thanks to Gene Simmons’ The Vault!!
This bootleg is fairly new as it came out in 2022 from Yellow Dog Records. I like how the front cover is a reproduction of the debut album cover with the ‘Zero Demos’ at the top. The back has a bunch of live shots of the band. And with a lot of bootlegs, there are mistakes and the only one I really see is the “House of Pain” demo is listed as “House In Pain”…close enough I guess. The vinyl is a red/yellow splatter and looks beautiful. The label is easy with the word Zero and Side A or B. Can’t much simpler than that without just putting a blank label on it. What do I have to say about the music? Well, we will see in a minute, but the sound is fantastic for demos from 1976 that have probably been transferred from tape to tape to tape over the years.
With Ace Frehley’s new album 10,000 Volts now out, I thought a perfect time to go through my entire Ace Frehley collection (excluding Kiss of course). We will go through the vinyl, the CDs, the Cassettes and the 7″ Singles.
At the end, I will give you my thoughts on the new album. Is it as good as everyone is saying? Is it as good as the ’78 Kiss solo album? You will have to watch it to find out. The show is live now, click below and give it a whirl. And don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. While you are at it, drop us a comment as well.
Scott Stapp – Higher Power – (Napalm Records)
The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards – (Silver Arrow Records)
Justin Timberlake – Everything I Thought It Was – (RCA Records)
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield – (Sony Music)
Ariana Grande – Eternal Sunshine – (Republic Records)
Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (50th Anniversary) – (Warner Records)
2 Loud 2 Old Music 