So, what have you been listening to lately?

[Basvarken]

The super deluxe 8 cd box set of Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous arrived yesterday.

It's a blast!

[uwe]

I was already worried you might have missed it, Lizzy boy!

[4stringer77]

Gold is up again but everyone here knows this forum is as good as gold. Right guys? 

[westen44]

That brunette in the Elvis Presley video looks like Yvonne Craig who played Batgirl and the Orion slave girl in a Star Trek episode.  After seeing that Elvis movie years ago, I'm just now noticing.  Later in life, he regretted making those meaningless movies, but they definitely had more than their share of pretty girls.  However, I've learned something today, and I'm a little surprised at it, too.  I'm still not completely sure that's Yvonne Craig, though. 

[Basvarken]

Rob Lamothe with his son Zander on drums. Featuring dUg Pinnick.
Love it!

[4stringer77]

That brunette in the Elvis Presley video looks like Yvonne Craig who played Batgirl and the Orion slave girl in a Star Trek episode.  After seeing that Elvis movie years ago, I'm just now noticing.  Later in life, he regretted making those meaningless movies, but they definitely had more than their share of pretty girls.  However, I've learned something today, and I'm a little surprised at it, too.  I'm still not completely sure that's Yvonne Craig, though.

It is. There's something called the internet movie database with all kinds of interesting info. Check it out.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057227/

[morrow]

Yvonne starred alongside Elvis in "It Happened at the World's Fair" in 1963, and then in "Kissin' Cousins" in 1964.

[westen44]

Thanks, everybody.  It's a little surprising because I thought I was better informed about Yvonne Craig than this. 

[uwe]

No one can write a love song to a city like Herr Osterberg can. And it's not Detroit this time.

[OldManC]

I like the heavy arrangement, but even if I was lukewarm on that, the fact that she sings that last "won't desert you" in perfect pitch is enough to make me love this version!

[westen44]

I like the heavy arrangement, but even if I was lukewarm on that, the fact that she sings that last "won't desert you" in perfect pitch is enough to make me love this version!

I'm not sure if there actually is a female equivalent of Steve Perry.  But this version of the song is really good.  I agree.  But I like Eva Under Fire's original songs, too. or maybe even more.  In the case of "Separate Ways," it sounds like promoting that song was fan-generated.  Like I said in an earlier post, it seems to be a fan favorite at the band's concerts.  Somehow Cover Nation got involved, and that's why there is now a video of the song on You Tube.  Cover Nation tries to promote bands that may not be receiving the attention they deserve, and I think EUF falls into that category. 

[uwe]

They play and sing it fine, but for such an iconic song they seem to add little to it. Or alter an approach. In Journey's canon that already is and always was the heaviest song - I remember listening to Frontiers in 1983 for the first time and being gobsmacked by the sheer heaviness of it, this wasn't "Anyway You Want It"- or "Don't Stop Believin'"-Journey anymore (both cracker songs, make no mistake), but something decidedly angstier, darker and more enraged. Back then I thought, Judas Priest would have been happy to have written and played that song, it was so damn intense. (It could have been a song for Queensryche too who shared a similar sense of dramatics with Priest.)

So these guys & the one girl have metalled up a song that already was as close to heavy metal as Journey ever got. Let's just say they do the song justice - you have to be brave to even attempt to cover that number. It's a testament to how good an AOR band Journey were.

[slinkp]

I once went to see a double bill of Journey and Def Leppard at Jones Beach (a beautiful outdoor 15,000 seat ampitheater not far from NYC).
This was 2006 I believe.  Journey played first, and they started while a large portion of the crowd - including us - were still snaking through the entry lines in the parking lot.
They played "Separate Ways" as the SECOND SONG while the place was still half empty.
There was a loud audible collective groan through the crowd outside the arena when the keyboard intro started. 

What were they thinking??  They must have known there were a decent number of Def Leppard fans for whom that song would be the absolute highlight of the Journey set.
It should have been the climax of the set.

[westen44]

They play and sing it fine, but for such an iconic song they seem to add little to it. Or alter an approach. In Journey's canon that already is and always was the heaviest song - I remember listening to Frontiers in 1983 for the first time and being gobsmacked by the sheer heaviness of it, this wasn't "Anyway You Want It"- or "Don't Stop Believin'"-Journey anymore (both cracker songs, make no mistake), but something decidedly angstier, darker and more enraged. Back then I thought, Judas Priest would have been happy to have written and played that song, it was so damn intense. (It could have been a song for Queensryche too who shared a similar sense of dramatics with Priest.)

So these guys & the one girl have metalled up a song that already was as close to heavy metal as Journey ever got. Let's just say they do the song justice - you have to be brave to even attempt to cover that number. It's a testament to how good an AOR band Journey were.

But Steve Perry is one of the best singers in the world.  Anyone trying to cover one of his songs is in for quite a job.  Besides that, as I've already noted, Eva Under Fire, the best I can tell, never meant for "Separate Ways" to be something they expected people to focus on.  It appears to have just been just a cover song used as a filler at some of their gigs.  At one point, though, a fan in the audience recorded it as a bootleg.  It circulated, gained popularity, etc.  Finally, Cover Nation got involved with the song and put it on their channel.   I don't even think Eva Under Fire was planning to do a video of it, although that's conjecture on my part.  For the most part, however EUF only does a few covers.  Whether good or bad, this is a band mostly doing originals.  Also, many of their songs come out sounding hard rock/metal.  That's just the natural direction they've moved toward.  Not all of their songs are that way, though. 

These are the only two other covers that Eva has done.  To be honest, I don't much like either one of these.  I think she does best with her own songs.  Somehow she must have got pushed into doing "With Or Without You."  Because she says in an interview she has never been interested in listening to U2 very much.

[uwe]

I actually like their more individual take on U2 better! Of course the bassist overplays, we all know that to play WOWY, you don't need to change notes on the bass at all, just play/throb D all the time - it works with the full D/A/B/G chord sequence!  Or in Eva Under Fire's case D# all the time because they moved the song up a half-note.

Needless to say Herr Adam Clayton - never the most imaginative bassist, this post wouldn't be complete without me mentioning this in passing - made the same mistake and also slavishly followed the chord changes in the original recording, tsk, tsk, tsk! Now if Ian Hill of Judas Priest had been U2's bassist, he wouldn't have bothered to ever leave the D (or D#) once. 



Ia(i)n('t) leavin' that note Hill