The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike and Friends
Friday – Episode 68 – Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Judas Priest…Remastered
“Judas Priest,” you ask? “Didn’t you do Judas Priest last year already?”
Yes we did, hence the “Remastered” Nigel Tufnel Top Ten. The old show was on Facebook Live with just Harrison the Mad Metal Man and myself, and most of you missed it. Everything we did a year ago, we can do better now. This will be a quality list show. Why? Because this time you will get some bonus tracks:
John from 2loud2oldmusic (who is working his way through the Priest catalogue)
The audience participation part is why you want to catch the show live! All Judas Priest studio albums qualify for our lists. Then Geoff will graph ’em all!
To see the original Priest list show with just Mike and Harrison, you can view it below. This is roughly a one-year anniversary show for Harrison. His first appearance was May 30 2020.
Our “Remastered” version will be a celebration of Harrison, of Judas Priest, friendship and rock and roll. And you can watch it at the links below.
A year ago today we got the message that you were gone. My first thought was “at least he is not in pain anymore.” I didn’t like that you had to suffer so much. I’ve seen enough cancer in this life.
My next thought was for Grandma, and Mom, and Aunt. They still miss you and talk about you. Aunt says that it will be weird coming home to Waterloo without you around. She says she used to like having her morning coffee when only the two of you were awake. I can picture you guys sitting there quietly talking, and maybe even laughing a little. That’s how I want to picture it, anyway.
I have a bunch of your CDs with me. I really liked Jackyl. I was surprised to find it in your collection. Looking at your discs here, I have so many questions. Why Jane’s Addiction? Why the second Garbage album, and not the first? Somebody here went to painstaking care to make you a mix CD, but why did she include “Who Let the Dogs Out”? I’d really like to know your thoughts on that one!
Since you’ve been gone, I followed my dreams and started a YouTube show. I chat with friends about music and I interview rock stars. So far I’ve talked to two former members of Helix — a band we used to discuss in the old days. You knew them long before I did. Now here I am talking to them. You were a part of my history with that band. We also did an entire episode on Led Zeppelin. That was another band you liked long before I discovered them. You thought it was cool when I started picking up these old bands you had in your school days. Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple.
I still don’t like sports. There’s something we never agreed on. Even being married to Jen and watching all this hockey, baseball and football, I still don’t like sports. I understand them a little better. I could converse with you about hockey now. It wouldn’t be the topic of my choosing, but I could do it.
We spent last summer quarantined between here and the cottage. You used to love that place. Long hair, no shirt, cutoff jean shorts. One summer you were there for about three weeks straight. I hope you would like what Kathryn has done with it. She’s kept everything intact. It’s not as manly as it was in your day, but everything is still there. It’s a lot quieter. We all got older!
If it wasn’t for this damned virus, we had an idea for a tribute last summer. Maybe we can do it this summer, or next summer. I wanted to buy a turntable for the lake, and play some of your old records in the back yard like you used to. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, because we can’t socialize. It’s been a weird year, man! Grandma really wants a hug. I’ll give her a big one soon, don’t worry.
Speaking of worry, she used to worry about you so much. Though we all miss you, at least she’s not worrying about you anymore. I know she’ll appreciate it when we can finally get together as a family again. Tell Uncle Don stories in the living room. Cutoff shorts in the summer, badminton raquet in one hand and a Labbatt’s in the other! Right?
I don’t drink beer, but I think if you were here right now, healthy and young again, I’d have a beer with you. I’d think I’d like that.
Music videos of the 80s could, in theory, be broken down into three major categories:
Conceptual videos. Sometimes with a storyline intercut. Occasionally the musicians got to act. Other examples have no musicians at all. (Iron Maiden’s “Can I Play With Madness”.) Conceptual were majority of music videos — usually combining the conceptual part with the band performing on some kind of stage. Not to be confused with…
Stage videos. Or, as Harrison calls then, “fake live videos”. Lipsynching the hits, on a stage, sometimes in front of a crowd, with no conceptual content. Sometimes these were simply live concert videos dubbed over with the album tracks. “Thrills in the Night” by Kiss, for example.
True live videos. Many Van Halen videos we grew up with, from “Unchained” to “Best of Both Worlds”, were live in concert — audio and video both. In some cases you could not buy these live tracks on any kind of release.
Of course there are more categories and sub-categories, just less significant. Some videos are entirely animated, which is more common today. We also have something new — the lyric video.
I can remember the sixth grade. Mrs. Peterson’s class. Van Halen’s 1984 was out and Quiet Riot were burning up the charts. These were pretty much the only bands I heard of. I hadn’t seen the music videos and I didn’t even know what Quiet Riot looked like. The only pictures I had ever seen of Quiet Riot were the buttons that the masked guy is wearing on his vest on the front cover of the cassette version of Metal Health. I squinted hard, but the Kevin DuBrow I imagined on that button looked nothing like the real deal.
The teacher was getting us started on simple surveys. To make it fun, she took a survey of all the most popular music in the class. Each kid got to name one favourite artist. I named Quiet Riot, and Kevin Kirby named Van Halen. Michael Jackson and Duran Duran were the top two.
As the discussion proceeded, many of the kids mentioned that they liked the music videos. Michael Jackson was at his peak, and he was the pioneer of the modern music video. Other artists like Culture Club made an impact with their image, which came across best on video. The teacher was curious about all this, so the class explained what a music video was. Something dawned on the teacher, and she exclaimed, “So to be a music star today, you not only have to be able to sing, but you also have to be able to act!”
No, and yes. You didn’t have to “act” per se, but you did have to be able to present yourself and play to a camera. David Lee Roth was not an according-to-Hoyle actor. Some would say he’s also not a singer, but he is a master at playing for the camera. Staring deep into the lens, gazing with the come-hither look, just so. Doing easily what other rock stars couldn’t, or didn’t want to.
So yes Mrs. Peterson, in a sense, to be a star in 1984, you had to be able to “act”. Video didn’t kill the radio star but it sure took a bite out of them.
Kids used to catch the videos on various cable shows. There was one called The Great Record Album Collection on WUTV that I sometimes caught before dinner. The Canadian movie channels (Superchannel, First Choice) would run music videos in the dead minutes after the credits rolled, to the top off the hour. Until MuchMusic came along, we Canadian kids didn’t have a one-stop-shop to watch all our music videos. Fortunately, having MuchMusic coincided with getting our first VCR.
Once we became seasoned in the way of the music video, we developed clear favourites. 12 and 13 year olds didn’t have a lot of money. We also had never attended a concert. Therefore, live videos with music that wasn’t what we were getting on the album were rarely favourites. We preferred the “fake live”, as Harrison the Mad Metal Man calls them. Then our immature ears could hear the songs clearly, and that would help us decide if were going to spend our nickles on a new tape.
Best of all though were the conceptual videos. Some were not good (just ask Billy Squier), but some really captured our imaginations. In Record Store Tales Part 206: Rock Video Night, we discussed some of my favourite clips to show to younger folks who weren’t there in the 80s. They were all conceptual clips. Many of them involved a band on a mission of some kind. There were so many of that kind. Thor had “Knock ‘Em Down”, Queensryche had “Queen of the Reich”, and Armored Saint had “Can U Deliver”. These videos featured, at least partially, a band on a quest. They also featured scantily clad women, and lots of “fake live” footage.
But the “fake live” footage often featured cool angles and close-ups. That meant we could examine the finer details of the outfits and guitars. You couldn’t just look up pictures of your favourite stars on the internet back in 1986. “I want hair like that!” Bob said about Eric Brittingham from Cinderalla. “That would look cool in red!” Meanwhile, I wanted Rob Halford’s leather jacket from the “Turbo” video. Of all these videos, we liked the Iron Maiden clip for “Wasted Years” best, which we watched in slow motion, pausing to identify every single Eddie. There were many we had never seen before.
We just weren’t as interested in purely live videos back then. For example, MuchMusic had two versions of Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'”: the original and the live one from Priest! Live. After the live video came out, that’s the one they primarily played. It was disappointing because if I was going to only hear Priest on TV once that week, I preferred the original. Frankly, we didn’t buy a lot of live albums as kids. When we collected bands, we would try to get all the albums including the live ones. But when we wanted to buy one tape from a band, we didn’t go for live ones. Some live albums we heard scared us off from the format. The Song Remains the Same wasn’t the kind of thing we had patience for.
That all changed for me in highschool. I wanted to buy a Triumph album. It would be my first. On recommendation from a kid in my history class, I picked Stages. And it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. Virtually every song was awesome! In fact the only track that wasn’t was a studio track! And then I had the joy of making those live versions my first Triumph loves. When I got the studio renditions, they seems thinner and colder by comparison. I never had that experience before.
I wonder if any of this will be interesting to anyone at all. Videos are irrelevant today as far as heavy metal goes. Today, we are not interested in the same things we were in our youths. We don’t care what the singer is wearing or what the drummer did to his hair. We care more about how the band is sounding, and how the crowd is responding. A new music video by a metal band is not as interesting as pro-shot live footage from Wacken. We want to listen carefully for backing tapes, we want to see the band gel on stage, and we want to cheer along when it’s good.
It is incredibly fortunate to have grown up in the 80s, when videos were in their prime, and still be rocking today when all that stuff is available at our fingertips any time we need a blast of nostalgia. Younger readers will never know the tense excitement of hitting “record-pause” on a VCR and waiting for the premier of the newest video by Maiden, Priest, or Def Leppard. Seeing the carefully edited stage moves paired with salon-fresh hair. It was a glorious time even if was completely ridiculous.
RATT – Reach for the Sky (Originally 1988, 2020 reissue — The Atlantic Years 1984-1990 box set)
One might suspect that Ratt’s decline in sales (peeling off approximately 1,000,000 buyers every album), they decided to change things up a bit. The first three Ratt platters were very much in the same mould. Little variation, just repeating that “Ratt N’ Rott” formula. Initially they ditched producer Beau Hill to work with Mike Stone, but the record label wasn’t happy and brought Hill back to finish.
Indeed, the opener “City to City” does sound like a new rodent. You can’t mistake them for anyone else once Pearcy starts yowling, but the slick song is fresher. Chugging away in a mid-tempo style, it’s a bangin’ start. But it’s the second track (and second single) that really kicks. “I Want a Woman” retained the sleaze but contained more focus on melody with an arena-sized chorus.
The third track, and first single, was the controversial “Way Cool Jr.”. Ratt with horns; oh my! It was the biggest leap for the rodents and it did give them a minor charting hit. Dipping into the blues, and eschewing the heavy histrionics. Letting the groove of the song work, and not overpowering it. Truth is Ratt should have tried stretching out a long time before.
Now that the big tracks are out of the way, how does the rest of the album hold up? Not too badly. Old-style Ratt returns on “Don’t Bite the Hand”, but at least with more melody than Dancing Undercover offered. They go ballady on “I Want to Love You Tonight”, kind of a new thing for Ratt, and one they’d explore again in the near future. That’s side one.
A heavy shuffle called “Chain Reaction” kicks off the second side, a welcome return to velocity. They return to the mid-tempo zone on “No Surprise”, which sounds like something Gene Simmons might have written for an 80s Kiss album. Good song, adequate hooks. “Bottom Line” is in a similar ball park. If it sounds like Ratt had help writing these songs, it might be because Beau Hill has a credit on most of them. He only had one on Dancing Undercover. That could be why this album has so much more melody and attention to songwriting. The hit-ready “What’s It Gonna Be” is a prime example, almost sounding like Van Hagar. A little too hard-edged for OU812, but perfect for a Ratt. A foreshadowing of the kind of songs they would write for their fifth album.
The album closes on a hard rocker that Hill didn’t co-write called “What I’m After”. A decent closer that doesn’t quite gel fully, but close enough for rock n’ roll. Or Ratt N’ Roll.
Of all the discs in The Atlantic Years box set, Reach for the Sky has one of the best bonus tracks. It’s an acoustic version of “Way Cool Jr.” from MTV Unplugged which chronologically happened in 1990 with Michael Schenker on guitar, filling in for Robbin Crosby who was in rehab. The unforgiving unplugged format can separate the men from the boys, and Ratt make the grade. Pearcy proves he can do that Ratt voice without layers of overdubs and effects. Meanwhile, Bobby Blotzer plays some interesting non-drum percussion parts. With Schenker on board, the mid-song acoustic segment really smokes. Ratt could have had a whole new side to their career, had they pursued this swampy acoustic direction with Michael instead of breaking up.
But that is still in Ratt’s future; there is one more album to go on this series. Reach For the Sky sustained Ratt’s sales. There was no decline this time and they sold a million. That still wasn’t good enough. Phone calls were made and Desmond Child, Dianne Warren, Sir Arthur Payson, and one Jon Bon Jovi were about to enter the picture.
Whether Reach sold enough copies or not is irrelevant to the quality of the music, which polished the sound up to a necessary level after the disappointing Dancing Undercover. It was a step towards the commercial, but they couldn’t do two tuneless albums in a row and survive.
It’s OK if your first album by anybody was a “greatest hits” of some sort. Over 15 million people bought Journey’s Greatest Hits in the US alone, and you can be guaranteed that several of those millions were buying Journey for the first time. Hundreds of thousands more copies still sell annually. This has to be considered one of the most successful hits compilations by a rock band.
Even if you were a Journey diehard back in 1988, you still wanted Greatest Hits. It had two huge Journey hits from movie soundtracks: “Only the Young” (Vision Quest) and “Ask the Lonely” (Two of a Kind). These songs were not meant to be obscurities; both were slated for the Frontiers album. These are two awesome songs with insanely catchy choruses, one a rocker and one a soft burner. Two gigantic peaks of the Jonathan Cain era of Journey, who co-wrote both songs.
“Don’t Stop Believin'” doesn’t need any additional commentary, except this: listen to the drums. That’s Steve Smith, the wizard of tempo. There is a reason that Smith can often be found filed in the Jazz section. Listen to his creative hits, cymbal work, and timing. Yet not a lot of snare. Same with “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”. This is not typical rock drumming, and this is something that his replacements have had to recreate as faithfully as they could.
Greatest Hits ignores the first three Journey albums (pre-Steve Perry), and justifiably so. Those first three progressive rock albums, as fascinating as they are, bore no hits. “To Play Some Music” peaked at #138. The earliest tracks are the radio staples “Lights” and “Wheel in the Sky” from 1978’s Infinity. Incidentally these are the only tracks without Steve Smith, featuring his predecessor Aynsley Dunbar.
In 2008, Sony a series of budget-priced reissues including Journey’s Greatest Hits. This version has one additional bonus track from Journey’s reunion album Trial By Fire from 1996. This is a fantastic album, but the ballad chosen (“When You Love a Woman”) tips the album too far on the scales to ballads.
Through all the hits you know, and maybe a couple you don’t (“Girl Can’t Help It”? “Send Her My Love”?) you will get a clear picture of some of Journey’s facets. But only some. Little of their instrumental wizardry, which continued into the Steve Perry era with songs like “Dixie Highway”. You also will not hear many hard edged moments, like “Stone in Love”. You will however get a taste of Steve Perry’s soul, and the excellent hooks that he concocted with Neal Schon and Jon Cain. You will absorb some awesome Schon tone. On the later tracks, like “I’ll Be Alright Without You” and “Be Good To Yourself”, you will hear the slickness and groove of Raised on Radio. But there are so many more key Journey tracks, as good if not better than these.
In honour of our special surprise guest yesterday, Mr. Dave Lizmi! One of the truly greatest hits 30 years ago in 1991 was “Nobody Said It Was Easy” by The Four Horsemen. Its dirty rock and roll sound clashed with everything going on at the time. They were rock, they were punk, they were southern, they were screaming, and they were truly special. “Nobody Said It Was Easy” is the song that hooked us.
I’ve said it time and time again: the LeBrain Train is a show you have to see live. Why? Because you never know what is going to happen. Case in point: last month we managed to hook up an unplanned meeting between Andy Curran and Mike Fraser. This week’s surprise was a drop-in from Dave Lizmi of The Four Horsemen!
As you may know, Dave was scheduled for a Friday night interview but had an emergency with his dad. Saturday’s show was a planned Nigel Tufnel Top Ten list show with Aaronand Tim Durling. We were talking about the Greatest Cover Art Designers.
As I was beginning the show, Dave messaged me to reschedule the interview, and at the spur of the moment, I asked him to sit in on the list show as well. Dave went for it, and managed to come up with his own list with no preparation time. Epic!
Your panel this week:
Yours truly (LeBrain)
Aaron (KeepsMeAlive)
Tim (Tim’s Vinyl Confessions)
Dave Lizmi (The Four fuckin’ Horsemen)
I can’t believe I just typed that.
History made today as a rock star joined a Nigel Tufnel Top Ten list for the very first time. How cool is that?
Thank you Tim, Aaron and Dave for a great set of lists and a fun fun show. From famous big names like Derek Riggs, Mark Wilkinson, Hugh Syme and Hipgnosis to more obscure artists, this was a great bunch of lists! Lots of show & tell!
“November Rain” was played live for the first time by Guns N’ Roses on this day in 1991.
GUNS N’ ROSES – Dramas & Traumas (Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, May 29 1991 – Deep Records bootleg CD)
The market is littered with live Guns N’ Roses bootlegs from the Use Your Illusion tour. The band’s own official Use Your Illusion World Tour Live in Tokyo VHS tapes are an ideal source of live music from their biggest tour. But what many fans seek is an earlier show, before Izzy Stradlin went his own way and was replaced by Gilby Clarke. Nothing against Gilby, but Izzy only lasted about six months and has been missed ever since. This bootleg is from the seventh show on the tour, when the material was new, unheard, and rough. Some of the songs were dropped or rarely played later on.
Audio is average as far as bootlegs go; it’s an audience tape job with some occasional issues. The set is complete. “Double Talkin’ Jive” is unlisted, hidden within the larger “Patience” track. It is also the historic live debut of “November Rain”. Opening with “Right Next Door to Hell”, which was dropped by the start of ’92, the energy is high. Axl takes no mercy on the demanding song, giving 100%, especially on the obligatory “fuck you”!
Guns wisely played familiar songs mixed in with the new stuff. The albums would not be out for over three months. Axl asks if the audience wants to go dancin’, which means “Mr. Brownstone” is up next, a low energy version comparatively. It might be too easy to blame the new guy Matt Sorum, but you do notice the lack of Steven Adler when you think about it. Back to new tracks, it’s the bluesy “Bad Obsession” which Axl explains was written long before “Brownstone”. Slash rips out the slide guitar and Axl gets distracted by a hottie. It’s the first audible appearance of another new member — keyboardist Dizzy Reed on piano. Later on, Axl makes a big point of announcing that Dizzy is, contrary to some media reports, “a goddamn a-fuckin’ official member of the band!”
Regarding live debut of “November Rain”, Guns didn’t have a setlist. Axl just called out the songs, feeling out the crowd. According to Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan in a later interview by Dan Gallagher of MuchMusic:
Matt – “Axl said ‘November Rain’, and we hadn’t played it since we recorded it…in July! In front of 20,000 people, we’re going, ‘Uh, do you remember how that goes?’ Damn near a year ago we cut this track.”
Duff – “And he has this grand piano, that raises up out of the stage. And all of a sudden the piano raises up and we’re going, ‘What the hell is that…’“
You can almost hear the fear. Sorum tentatively taps the cymbals, but doesn’t miss his cue when it’s time to come crashing in. Axl mentions he can barely remember the words, but only flubs a couple. Slash’s first solo nails most of the big hooks, while the second is more improvisational. They all struggle a bit on the outro, but damn — they did it!
After “November Rain”, a microphone catches Slash saying, “A fucking curve ball, man!”
The two most significant tracks are the two sung by Izzy that were necessarily dropped when he left: “Dust N’ Bones”, and “14 Years”. Both feature raspy, Keef-like lead vocals from the guitarist. These two tracks are very good reasons to want an early set like this.
There are long solos, intros and outros, and all the stuff you expect from a Guns N’ Roses show. The solos had yet to evolve into the forms they would take by the time they hit Tokyo, though the “Godfather” theme has its place. They play a bit of Rod Stewart’s “I Was Only Joking” as part of the “Patience” intro, and of course “Only Women Bleed” before “Heaven’s Door”. The “Voodoo Chile” lick always works well going into “Civil War”. It’s also interesting to hear how the songs started out early on tour. “Civil War” seems a bit shaky in the start, but goes nuclear by the end.
The main set ends on “Perfect Crime” and the encores consist of “Estranged”, “Sweet Child”, “Jungle” and “Paradise”. A pretty slam-dunk way to send ’em home. Unlike “November Rain”, “Estranged” was already humming like a well-tuned car by this time.
The two bonus tracks are interesting curiosities from the 1989 MTV music video awards. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers performed “Free Falling” and “Heartbreak Hotel” with Axl Rose. They are here as a little bit of added value, but make no mistake — it’s just Axl from the band, nobody else.
As mentioned earlier, there are some sonic anomalies of the type that usually come with bootlegs. The disc goes silent for very brief moments during “Right Next Door to Hell”. Not a deal breaker considering the rest is very listenable.
Unfortunately Dave Lizmi had a family emergency and could not make the show tonight. We hope Dave and his family are OK. In the meantime, the show must go on, so T-Rev and I talked Four Horsemen memories and showed off our stuff. It was a pretty good show if you’re interested in this great band. We hope to reschedule Dave at some time in the future.
Start at the 0:48:00 minute mark to check out the Four Horsemen chit-chat. Everything before that is the first attempt at a Sunset Cam. Enjoy the show! And tune in tomorrow May 29, for a second show, details below…
SATURDAY SHOW! Don’t miss Aaron and Tim Durling from Tim’s Vinyl Confessions as we talk about the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Cover Art Designers!
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike and T-Rev
Friday – Episode 66 – Dave Lizmi
The Four Horsemen should need no introduction. The only guy to play on all three albums (plus an EP) is guitarist Dave Lizmi. He is a master of the Les Paul and his tone is sublime. Trev and I look forward to asking him everything we wanted to know about one of our favourite bands.
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano
Saturday – Episode 67 – Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Cover Art Designers – with Aaron and Tim Durling
Please welcome Tim from Tim’s Vinyl Confessions and The Contrarians! I’m so glad to have him on the show. His collection is insane — give him a follow on Instagram and see for yourself. The list this week is a Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Cover Art Designers. This was a challenging list, but Tim knows his stuff and I’m sure he will have a killer set of albums to show off. Joining us for this one will be Aaron who also has a pretty impressive collection. This is a Saturday show, so we hope that you’ll join us!
The Saturday shows are a summer experience in order to include more people. I hope you can make it. As always, it’s best to participate live!
mikeladano.com 