So, what have you been listening to lately?

[Basvarken]

Rob, I have to make amends! Listened to Bad Reputation (the album) a couple of times. It's real nice (especially the ballady stuff - appeals to a wuss like me), good melodic songwriting. For the record: Downey's bass drum work on Bad Reputation (the song) is great.

The songs Bad Reputation, Southbound and Dancing in the Moonlight are quite strong.
Too bad Robbo didn't really contribute on this album(except for the two solos).

[uwe]

Anything from the Nuclear Blast label is always reliably and refreshingly dumb. Which is why I buy it ardently.

Young women from mostly Switzerland getting together to wrinkle noses and play homely multi-harmony folk music with a country tinge. The singer, needless to say, is Kate Middleton Dutch. 90% of all heavy metal female vocalists are. Those who aren't just deny their origins, don't be fooled.



Her predecessor(ess), likewise blonde, söünded more Tshörman, doro you think sö?, but was in fact Swiss.

[gearHed289]

Amanda Palmer just put an album together to help with the devastation from fires in Australia. She's a very interesting artist who used to have a band with just her and a drummer called the Dresden Dolls. Very manic and passionate in her delivery. My daughter is way into her. She has possibly had more success than any other artist in the world of crowd funding. Here's one of a couple of Midnight Oil covers on the new record.

[uwe]

Ah, the late Kelly Johnson ...

Like Farrah Fawcett playing a Goldtop.

[uwe]

Bought a five CD box of "Eric Burdon & The Animals" (not the original Animals line up, but more adventurous). It's a treasure trove, I wasn't really acquainted with the second phase of the Animals, the obvious hits excepted:

[Pilgrim]

I hadn't thought about San Franciscan Nights or Sky Pilot for years!  LOVE those numbers!

Sky Pilot is a perfect example of really well done Vietnam War protest tunes.  I've never seen that CBC broadcast version before...quite a bit of backup orchestration behind it.

[westen44]

Eric Burdon's unusually good voice has always stood out.  He may not be big, but his voice certainly is. 

[Dave W]

Audio and video start together and get slightly out of sync by the end, but still, a Dave Edmunds video is always good.

[westen44]

This was a jam session before the Bangladesh concert.

[OldManC]

I posted about these guys in the Gibson group, but at this point it belongs here as well. Waiting on some CDs from Japan, but YouTube has tone of stuff too. Not only is this bassist a gear hound, he's really good. I wish I could play like him and not just sound busy. I need to better learn my fretboard.

And I can't believe some enterprising music exec didn't bring these guys to the U.S. With no changes whatsoever (still singing in Japanese), I think they would have been huge in the rock world. They're great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFW6YvV7Et4&list=PLd0H-IcdnCAdE_NxJTiTp0J4G9M_vfbBX&index=3

[amptech]

I posted about these guys in the Gibson group, but at this point it belongs here as well. Waiting on some CDs from Japan, but YouTube has tone of stuff too. Not only is this bassist a gear hound, he's really good. I wish I could play like him and not just sound busy. I need to better learn my fretboard.

And I can't believe some enterprising music exes didn't bring these guys to the U.S. With no changes whatsoever (still singing in Japanese), I think they would have been huge in the rock world. They're great!

Lots of great 'all over the place' bass playing in Japanese music. I follow a couple of Japanese Gibson bass players on insta, lots of great axes!
Here's a blast from the past- great, fluid bass playing..

[uwe]

I posted about these guys in the Gibson group, but at this point it belongs here as well. Waiting on some CDs from Japan, but YouTube has tone of stuff too. Not only is this bassist a gear hound, he's really good. I wish I could play like him and not just sound busy. I need to better learn my fretboard.

And I can't believe some enterprising music exec didn't bring these guys to the U.S. With no changes whatsoever (still singing in Japanese), I think they would have been huge in the rock world. They're great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFW6YvV7Et4&list=PLd0H-IcdnCAdE_NxJTiTp0J4G9M_vfbBX&index=3

Where were you? These guys were lauded here already years ago (which had me buy a 2 CD anthology from them, "Mother of All the Best").

Tune in next week when Herr Carlston introduces to the world a little-known band from an English harbor town with a name that sounds like insects ... 

I believe that singing in Japanese is deemed as a commercial coffin nail in the West. And these guys just wouldn't switch - all credit to them.

I can btw very well understand their appeal to you: They sound like a rising sun Cheap Trick! The way the singer constructs his vocal lines and the songwriting owe a lot to Cheap Trick. They are essentially a - very good - power pop band.

[uwe]

Get your plaid shirts out, new Gallagher live album imminent:





From the legendary 1974 Irish Tour - when no large act would tour Northern Ireland, but Rory did. I always liked the line up with keyboardsmith Lou Martin and drummer Rod  de'Ath best. Lou gave Rory's music more color and refinement. Rod was less conventional a drummer than either his predecessor or his immediate successor Ted McKenna (by that time, Rory was looking for a more basic drum sound, see the "Sex Pistols Incident" below).

Gallagher's bass guitarist Gerry McAvoy stated that de'Ath "was the most undrummer-like drummer I ever played with. His technique was so strange that it added a whole new dimension to Rory's sound."

They are also on the new release (their last tour with him, reverting to trio format after having seen the Sex Pistols live, he would ditch them after the aborted Notes from San Francisco recordings which only saw a release decades later).

[OldManC]

I can btw very well understand their appeal to you: They sound like a rising sun Cheap Trick! The way the singer constructs his vocal lines and the songwriting owe a lot to Cheap Trick. They are essentially a - very good - power pop band.

I said elsewhere that watching their early live videos makes me feel like it's 1981 and I'm seeing them at the Whisky with Motley Crue (who displayed a lot more Cheap Trick-like sensibilities before Nikki decided to shout at any devils).

I know bands that sang in their (non-English) native language rarely if ever got any notice here, but I'm positive these guys would have done just fine with the rock crowd in either the 80s or 90s. Watching their videos, it's interesting to see how they weaved both decades into their sound. To my ears (and excepting the language of the vocals), they sound very 80s-90s, American, glam rock/power pop (which, of course, owes a lot to Bowie, Slade, the Sweet, T-Rex, etc.), and I've loved that stuff since I first was aware of the genres.

[Dave W]