Clang & Clatter

Michael Parr over at Popdose threw me for a bit of a loop today. I had my Five all percolated and ready to pour when he posted his Five and announced a theme of 2012 releases. So I groaned a bit, thinking my 2012 version wouldn’t be too interesting. Then I scrambled to get mine in before heading to a meeting, and whaddyaknow, it didn’t turn out too bad. But then I thought it would be a waste not to post my original Five, so in typical contrarian fashion, I posted both!

2012 Five:

Torpedohead - “Heartbreak Key” (Greetings from Heartbreak Key, 2012)
I got turned onto this album just recently by Michael Butler over at the Rock and Roll Geek Show podcast when he did a track-by-track review of the album with founder, vocalist, and guitarist Sven Spacebrain. Hailing from Frankfurt, Germany, Torpedohead is fun, high-energy, straight-ahead melodic rock ‘n’ roll chock full of hooks, harmonies, and sing-along choruses. If you’re into that kind of thing, they are definitely worth checking out.

P.O.D. - “Beautiful” (Murdered Love, 2012)
I purchased this for my tweenaged son based on the hype that this release would be more similar to Satellite than their recent releases. It’s a good album, but apart from a couple of songs, I don’t think it delivers on the promise. This is the obligatory “ballad” to try to grab at least a little CCM FM radio airplay, although with subject matter that includes suicide, cutting, drugs, and depression, I doubt they’ll get played on anything but the edgiest of stations.

Ginger Wildheart - “Strange New Year” (555%, 2012)
Here’s another excellent track from Ginger’s wildly successful PledgeMusic campaign. This triple-album definitely lived up to the hype, and it’s one of my favorite purchases of the year so far.

Rush - “The Wreckers” (Clockwork Angels, 2012)
I’m still trying to get into the new Rush album. I was sold on it based on “Headlong Flight,” and while the album is good, I struggle to listen to it all the way through in one sitting. “The Wreckers” is easily the poppiest song on the album, hearkening a bit to something off of Hold Your Fire or their other late 80s output.

Nada Surf - “Looking Through” (Dulcitone Files, 2012)
Beautiful tune from a digital-only EP of acoustic performances of five of the tracks from the band’s most recent release The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy. As much as I like this band, late though I was to the party, I’m not sure why I haven’t picked up that album.

Original Five:

Led Zeppelin - “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” (Led Zeppelin III, 1970)
Zeppelin’s nod to the Mississippi Delta blues. I wish I loved it as much as they did. I just can’t get into this song.

Rush - “The Necromancer” (Caress of Steel, 1975)
Part Tolkien, part By-Tor, “The Necromancer” (and Caress of Steel as a whole) marked the point at which Rush dived headlong into the long conceptual pieces that marked the first part of their career. Although Caress was a commercial disappointment and earned the ire of their record company, most of the album is quite good. I especially like the spaciness of Part I of this track. Fortunately Rush didn’t cave under the pressure from their label to abandon the concept songs and produce a hit for the next album, which resulted in what is considered by many as the definitive Rush album.

KISS - “Then She Kissed Me” (Love Gun, 1977)
Not necessarily a bad cover of Phil Spector’s “Then He Kissed Me,” I just never thought it fit with the rest of the album and didn’t see the point, especially when I discovered this album as a pre-teen expecting the blood, the fire, and the spectacle I had at that point associated with KISS.

Collective Soul - “General Attitude” (Youth, 2004)
By the time Youth was released, Collective Soul had left Atlantic, lost its lead guitarist and songwriting collaborator Ross Childress, and had become (in my opinion) largely an Ed Roland solo band. Despite all this, it’s a great overlooked album, if you can get past some of the over-processed guitars. “General Attitude” is a pretty good representation of the rest of the album, a well-written straight-ahead pop song. Nothing wrong with that.

Glen Phillips - “I Want a New Drug” (Mr. Lemons, 2006)
I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I first heard this almost-unrecognizable cover of the Huey Lewis & the News mega-hit. These days I really appreciate Glen’s sparse, stripped-down rearrangement of the song.

Queensrÿche - “Hand on Heart” (Empire, 1990)
Great song from the last great album from Queensrÿche (and even that claim can be argued). Unfortunately things would begin to unravel slowly for them, and they would lose their way, leading to the current-day comedy of errors. Man, I miss Chris DeGarmo.

Joe Satriani - “Tears in the Rain” (The Extremist, 1992)
Short, melancholy acoustic number from Satch. His genius even shines through in something as simple as this.

Kick Axe - “Cause for Alarm” (Vices, 1984)
I fell in love with this debut album from Canadian metal act Kick Axe as a teenager. It felt fresh, genuine, and new compared to some of the other stuff I was listening to at the time (I can’t say the same for the band’s name). Too bad they couldn’t hold on to the magic they had on this album. It would only be a few short years—and a couple of mostly forgettable albums—later that they would disband and disappear until they jumped on the reunion bandwagon in 2003.

Dream Theater - “Scene One: Regression” (Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, 1999)
I’ve mentioned here before how I’ve struggled to understand the plot of this concept album that is the follow-up to one of my favorite Dream Theater songs, “Metropolis - Part 1: ‘The Miracle and the Sleeper’.” I consider this more of filler intro track since nearly half of its short 2:12 length is taken up by a narrative of someone apparently being hypnotized. Nothing special here—unlike the rest of the album—but it serves to set the tone and theme from both a musical and storyline standpoint.

Collective Soul - “In Between” (Disciplined Breakdown, 1997)
I start and end this Five with bands that I truly miss. At one point Collective Soul was one of my favorite bands, this being from one of my favorite albums of theirs.

Look behind you. Popdose’s Friday Five is here.

Scorpions - “Holiday” (Love Drive, 1979)
Another tender jam from the Scorpions. These guys did the hard rock ballad so well. Love it.

Neal Morse - “Mercy Street” (Testimony 2, 2011)
As the title suggests, this is the second autobiographical album that details how this Spock’s Beard leader decided to leave one of the most respected modern progressive rock bands to embark on a solo career that matched up with his conversion to Christianity. I like the tune, but it seems it really needs to be listened to in the context of the entire album. Despite that, there are several vocal melodies from this that are absolutely golden.

Nirvana - “Lounge Act” (Nevermind, 1991)
Meh. I’ve never really liked this one much. It lacks the energy of the rest of the album until the last third of the song when Cobain starts screaming.

Collective Soul - “Maybe” (Disciplined Breakdown, 1997)
Say what you will, but I really liked Collective Soul back in the day. Some of their tunes have aged well, while others haven’t. As far as I’m concerned, “Maybe” is in the list with the former.

Saint Vitus - “Look Behind You” (The Blasting Concept Volume II, 1990)
I was listening to the excellent previously-unreleased Hüsker Dü outtake “Erase Today” from this SST compilation just yesterday. And since I absolutely loved this comp and very nearly wore the cassette out back in the late-80s, you would expect that AllMusic would give it a 1.5-star rating and lead off their review with this comment:

Perhaps unwittingly, The Blasting Concept, Vol. 2 marks pretty much the exact point at which SST Records irretrievably lost it.

That may be true, but it doesn’t make me love this Saint Vitus track—and most of the others on here—any less.

Friday. Five songs. On shuffle. Here we go…

I’m beginning to get the impression that maybe I have different musical tastes than most in these here parts and that there’s the possibility that some of the IckMusic regulars may not have heard some of the songs that I post here. So beginning with this Friday Five, I plan to include links to the tracks that exist in Spotify for any of the more curious among us. I hope that’s OK.

Collective Soul - “Giving” (Disciplined Breakdown, 1997)
There was a period where I was absolutely infatuated with anything Collective Soul put out. The band’s third album may not have produced as many hits—only two—or as many instantly familiar tunes as some of its other albums, but I actually like it better than most of the others. Maybe it’s because it was born in the midst of management difficulties, money troubles, and lawsuits. Or maybe it’s simply that Ed Roland knows how to write a good song.

Joe Satriani - “Hands in the Air” (Is There Love in Space?, 2004)
One of the things I have always liked about Joe Satriani is that he doesn’t just noodle around on the guitar just for the sake of noodling. The man can shred with the best of them, but he always seems to be more concerned with creating a real song with a real melody and a groove. Give me that over guitar wankery any day.

Yes - “Changes” (Yesyears, 1991)
A live version of one of my favorite songs off 90125. Not much else to say.

KISS - “Black Diamond” (KISS, 1974)
Klassic Kiss. And while the first album did not capture the spirit or the energy of the band’s live performances, I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart. I love the unpolishedness of Peter Criss’ vocals, and it contains some of my favorite guitar work from Ace Frehley. That being said, I really could do without the outro effect of the tape slowing down.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - “Comes a Time” (Coil sessions outtake, 1996)
I have had this song in my collection for so long, and since Glen Phillips has performed it live so often and recorded versions of it for other projects, I have become so familiar with it to the point that I forget it’s not an official TTWS release. Beautiful mostly acoustic tune with electric embellishments underneath and even a solo, and it contains Phillips’ typical poetic lyrics and themes.