LOUDNESS – World Tour 2018 – Rise to Glory – Live in Tokyo (2019 Ear Music)
In an unfortunate twist of events, Loudness drummer Masayuki Suzuki was sidelined by stroke and could not perform on the Rise to Glory tour. Ryuichi “Dragon” Nishida filled in beat-for-beat and appears on the live album World Tour 2018 – Rise to Glory – Live in Tokyo. This 2 CD/1 DVD combo set is compiled from three days in Tokyo, with a bonus: the DVD features one track with Masayuki Suzuki from the fourth day. His performance on “Loudness” is as if there was nothing wrong with him, and he appears delighted to be playing live again.
Live in Tokyo is an energized performance, focusing almost entirely on early Loudness. This being a hometown crowd, many of the songs are performed with their original Japanese lyrics. 1985’s Thunder in the East takes the early focus on disc one with the first six tracks all being sourced from the “big” album. These tracks are intense, with solos by Akira Takasaki that melt the face. Classic Loudness with jagged riffs and still-powerful vocals from Minoru Niihara.
Oldies abound. Disc 1 also includes “Loudness” (the version with Ryuichi Nishida on drums) from the 1981 debut The Birthday Eve. A slick, well-received version. There’s also a punishing “In the Mirror” from third LP The Law of Devil’s Land, and the memorable “Crazy Doctor” from 1984’s Disillusion.
The second disc spotlights two lesser-known albums. First is The Law of Devil’s Land from 1983. The first five heavy numbers (including a second version of “In the Mirror”) all come from that platter. This is the heavy proto-thrash that Loudness were peddling at the start of the 80s, and vicious stuff it is. But not without hooks! The last five originated on Disillusion, regarded by some aficionados as Loudness’ best. From “Crazy Doctor” through the ballad “Ares’ Lament” and the finisher “Esper”, these are some great metal songs.
Impressively, the third disc (the DVD) highlights another batch of songs missed on the first two discs: newer material. “Soul on Fire”, “Go For Broke”, “Until I See the Light”, “I’m Still Alive” and a pair of instrumentals from the new Rise to Glory (2018) stand up to the earlier material. The awesome “The Sun Will Rise Again” from the 2014 album of the same name rounds out the freshest material. The new tunes are still heavy, riffy and melodic, but with a very slight modern edge. “I’m Still Alive” goes thrash metal, but that’s part of Loudness’ origins. Besides the return of Suzuki on drums for one song, the highlight of the DVD is a ballad. After so many brutal songs, Minoru breaks out an acoustic guitar for an unplugged “Ares’ Lament”. This is completely different than the version on CD 2, which was done fully electric.
Any classic band from the 80s or earlier, still trying to pull it off today, has the same question to answer: How good is the singer? Minoru Niihara is excellent. As if no years have passed. None of the material presents a challenge.
Considering the mixture of material over the three discs, Rise to Glory – Live in Tokyo would be a suitable entry point for any rock fan wanting to check out Loudness. You’ll get the hits from Thunder in the East, ample early deep cuts, and a sampling of quality new stuff. Value for the money and time invested.
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano
Episode 50 – Top Five King’s X Albums with Martin Popoff
For this very special 50th episode of the LeBrain Train, we welcome back Martin Popoff to talk King’s X! It is such an honour and a pleasure to have Martin on a second time. King’s X was the subject broached (by Uncle Meat, thank you) and Martin challenged us to hone down our usual Nigel Tufnel Top Ten lists to a tight Top Five.
Topic decided, it was only after the fact I realized how difficult this was going to be! But I think I have my top five ready. These are some serious lists, and we’re sitting down with a serious King’s X fan.
Friday night, “We Will Find Who We Are”. Is this one “Over My Head”? Let the “Skeptical Winds” blow. I don’t want to “Pretend”, because “I’ll Never Get Tired” of King’s X. Please give Martin your biggest welcome, and give it a share, won’t you?
On multiple occasions I’ve said the best years working at the Record Store were the early years. 1994, 1995, into 1996…I’d never been happier working hard, and maybe never will be again. There was no corporate head office, no regional managers, and minimal pre-fab signage that all looked the same. It was just a few of us, die hard music fans, and a Record Store. We were in the process of building empires!
The boss was always looking to expand our CD inventory. Rarities of any kind were hard to find in Kitchener. Be they singles, Japanese imports, or live bootlegs, they were hard to come by. Periodically, let’s say once every couple months, the boss would drive to Toronto to pick up our weekly inventory orders from Records on Wheels. R.O.W. didn’t carry anything particularly rare, just the major label hits that we needed. Occasionally the boss would stop at other retailers in Toronto to pick up live bootlegs. Nirvana, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses, whatever was popular. There were a couple stores in Toronto that had massive amounts of bootleg CDs. He’d bring them back here and sell them for around $40. Nobody in Kitchener had access to that kind of stock. They weren’t cheap and we didn’t make any profit off them, but they sure made us look better. A lot better. It gave us a chance to catch up a little bit with Sam’s and Encore in the “cool” stakes.
We also tried some more obscure distributors. One of them carried UK, US and Japanese imports. But again they were expensive and we had to hope they’d sell. These distributors were really unreliable. Long backorders were a problem, and there was no guarantee we’d get what we ordered. We sometimes got lucky. Nirvana’s Hormoaning was in demand, and we did get a few of those.
I’ll never forget this one Nirvana kid who wanted Hormoaning so bad. He didn’t have enough cash so he kept trading in discs until he had enough credit to cover it. You had to trade in a lot of CDs to cover $40 plus tax. But he got his Hormoaning. Until he had to trade that one in, too. And he did.
There was another guy (he kind of looked like a little troll doll), and he worked up at Carry On Comics in Waterloo. I think his brother was friends with the owner, and that’s why he started coming in. He had his eyes set on an R.E.M. bootleg, specifically because it had a song called “Where’s Captain Kirk?”. It was one of R.E.M.’s non-album singles, a cover of a band called Spizzenergi.
I was beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise, What I felt what I saw was a total surprise, I looked around and wondered can this be, Or is this the start of my insanity. Oh but its true, As we went warp factor 2, And I met all of the crew, Where’s Captain Kirk?
The comic book guy salivated over that CD until he finally had enough cash to buy it. I didn’t think he was serious. He used to talk about buying this vintage Millenium Falcon toy and hanging it from his ceiling. He was serious this time!
I managed to snag a couple live bootlegs. No discounts on these! Nine Inch Nails – Woodstock ’94, and Guns N’ Roses Covering ‘Em were both favourites of mine. Money well spent and still in the collection today. The boss hated that we took some of his good Toronto stock. He was selling them virtually at cost, so that’s why we had to pay full price. But he really, really did not appreciate when T-Rev and I bought stuff like that. Here he was, stocking them to make our store look cooler…but in swoops T-Rev and metal Mike! Maybe he should have charged more for them, across the board. Where else in town were you going to find them?
On one of those early Toronto runs, the boss was one of the first victims of the Ontario NDP government’s photo radar project. In order to curb speeding, the NDP launched the 400-series highway photo radar. The boss was caught speeding on the 401 and found a nice photo and fine in his mailbox. It was from one of the trips back from R.O.W. The project was only semi-successful. Drivers experimented with methods of covering up their license plates from photo radar cameras, and over 5000 photos were deemed useless. The incoming Mike Harris government campaigned on getting rid of photo radar, and they did immediately after taking office. The great experiment was over, but the boss was one of the drivers dinged. All he was trying to do was bring us some rock and roll! But it was the first and only photo radar picture I saw back then.
Damn government always cutting into our profits!
Behind the scenes, he was building empires. He announced that he wanted us to buy even more stock from the public. Trade-in CDs were big business but we were now going to be buying for two stores. Or more.
George, rest his soul, was a bit of a know-it-all. He was the oldest kid on the block. He was already living there when my parents moved in. He was burning the nipples out of Playboy magazines with a magnifying glass when the rest of us were playing dinky cars. Logically, he was into music before the rest of us as well. The only one in the neighbourhood that was into Kiss before George was Sean Meyer. George got into Kiss through Sean. But he had a bit of a superiority complex, because Sean didn’t hang out with us, which made George the de facto senior of the group.
I remember him strutting his superior robot knowledge when we were really young kids. It was him, myself, and Bob in the back yard with our Lego. (George stole a piece of my Lego by the way, and a piece Bob’s too. But we stole them back.) George had been into a show called Force Five and built a robot made of Lego based on what he’d seen. We admired it, and each of us came back with our own robots of Lego. We made some design improvements over George, but he was not impressed.
In a condescending voice, George explained, “Yours are good but they’re not what mine is. You built yours based on the concept of ‘robot’. I built mine based on ‘Force Five'”.
Just the way he was. As the youngest of three siblings, perhaps that contributed to his need to be better than us at childhood activities. Or maybe it was just that he was the senior of the group. But he did. He even ranked all the neighbourhood kids in our baseball abilities. We played “Pop 500” in the ball park. According to George:
“Bob’s the best,” which honestly was indisputable, but then he went on. “Then there’s me, and Rob Szabo, and John, and Todd Meyer, and Scott Peddle and Mike Ladano at the bottom.” Hey, dude spoke his mind. You can see why he made it difficult to like him sometimes.
We blamed George the time they were playing catch, and broke a window. They were playing catch in the school yard. Either Bob or John threw a solid one to George, who chickened out and ducked, thus breaking the window. He got the blame, anyway. When it came down to the actual hierarchy of the group, he was often Scapegoat.
Naturally George was into Kiss, and rock and roll, before Bob and I. He had a growing Kiss collection. We heard those albums first via George. But he was such a know-it-all. He bought a bass, and would play around in the back yard going, “Name this tune.”
One day, Bob came to me and said “I think I have a way to trick George on a music question.”
It was the very same Masters of Metal Vol. 2 cassette tape that started me on my own rock journey. There was a band on the tape that we were sure that George had never heard of: Accept. And to our young ears, Udo Dirkschneider sounded exactly like Brian Johnson from AC/DC — the shriek.
“I’m going to play him this song ‘Balls to the Wall’ and we’re going to ask him who the band is.”
I enthusiastically agreed to play along. Bob’s prediction was that he would think it was AC/DC. It was a gamble, given that George was more experienced. But he needed to be taken down a peg.
And so, in my back yard, gathered around a boom box, Bob challenged George to “name that band.” Masters of Metal Vol. 2 was cued up to track five on side one: “Balls to the Wall”.
George was quiet for the first minute of the track.
Then, “Watch the damned!” screamed Udo Dirkschneider from the speakers of that boom box.
Immediately George answered, “AC/DC”. And just as immediately, Bob and I stood up and laughed!
“No! It’s Accept!” exclaimed Bob in victory.
“Sign of victorrrrryyyy!” sang Udo behind us.
George was flabbergasted. He immediately struck out with explanations for his incorrect answer. The quality of my boom box may have been drawn into question. There were reasons that he answered AC/DC, but they weren’t his fault!
But Udo had spoken, “sign of victory,” and Bob and I declared ourselves the winners of this particular contest. It was a very memorable way to cement Accept into my grey matter. A momentous occasion in terms of neighbourhood history. We made sure we told the tale of how we bested George in rock knowledge one afternoon.
Listen to both Udo and Johnson at that point in the 80s. They both had such a deep, full bodied shriek. The fact that George thought it was Johnson isn’t really a patch on George. It was an honest mistake. Our pride in fooling him was simply because George acted like he knew absolutely everything about rock. And we had proven that he did not. That’s all we wanted. It was kind of like being the guy who took down James from his winning streak on Jeopardy.
As a coda to this story, it’s interesting to note that none of us knew what most of these bands looked like. There were no picture inside that little cassette cover. Then, one day I was in my basement watching one of the very first episodes of the Pepsi Power Hour. On came Accept with “Balls to the Wall”. I glued myself to the screen.
As the three guys with the axes in the front made cool knee-bending poses in sync with the music, I said that “Accept look pretty cool.” Wolf Hoffmann in the front with the white Flying V” had a blonde, wind-swept mane. I envied him. The video lingered on the three axe-wielders for some time, before the vocals finally begin.
And then, suddenly appeared this little, tiny guy in head-to-toe camouflage. He was slightly rotund, and he had… short hair? This man with the monstrous screaming voice was a tiny guy with short hair and camo pants? It was completely incongruent with the sound coming from his lungs. How could this be? It seemed, from the video, that the band were sort of highlighting or even mocking his short stature in their stage act. A close-up shot of Udo’s head within the gap of Wolf Holfmann’s Flying V was simultaneously hilarious and bizarre. In another shot, Wolf is covering Udo’s head and face with his hands as if he’s just a little GI Joe doll.
Obviously my first priority was telling Bob about this fresh discovery. In our next conversation, I told him of the Accept video and the startlingly short (and short-haired) lead singer. He was astonished to see it for himself. I think seeing what Udo looked like may have soured him on Accept. I don’t recall him being into them as much anymore, and I’m pretty sure he never owned any of their albums.
Fortunately Accept redeemed themselves in my eyes with a video from their next album Metal Heart. I taped this video off the Power Hour in early 1986. It didn’t feature Udo being used as a prop so much. Scott Peddle found the spinning effect to be dizzying, as did I, but a cool effect it was. (In hindsight it actually looks quite similar to the “bullet time” effect from the Matrix films.) “Midnight Mover” was the song that kept me interested in Accept. It proved you could have a little guy in camouflage (now with additional leather military utility belt) at the front and center, and still have it look cool enough for the kids.
Bob agreed that “Midnight Mover” was a cool video but was never really won over to Accept like I was. By 1989, any prejudice either of us had about Udo’s appearance were rendered irrelevant when Accept parted with him and brought in an American singer named David Reece. They came out with an intriguing new sound with “Generation Clash”, the first single/video. Reece was a normal looking blonde singer dude, totally ready for MTV play. He also had pipes to spare. He could nail the screams but he was more versatile, and able to do more commercial music. And it seemed like that was the direction that Wolf wanted to go in.
Ultimately the Reece lineup didn’t survive, but their story certainly didn’t end there. Where I was concerned, I liked “Generation Clash”. I still think the guitar solo alone is a tremendous and diverse piece of music. The Accept/Reece experiment didn’t really fail for me, and I think their Eat the Heat album is pretty heavy for the year 1989.
Still, when they make the movie of my life, it’s the Accept scene with George getting schooled that I hope makes the final cut.
I shouldn’t say your name. The news is fresh and your family members are finding out now, just like I did.
We met four years ago via a mutual pal, but bonded immediately over a shared love of music, and a similar empathy for the downtrodden. You were wearing your trademark Captain America T-shirt. At least, to me it was your trademark. How impressed I was with your history in music journalism. Interviewing the stars, seeing your name in print. You invited us to your wedding. It was actually the last wedding I attended before this Covid stuff put the brakes on everything.
Last year about this time I was hitting a wall. Stress was taking a serious toll. You offered to go out for a coffee to talk and I said “sure”. But part of my depression is staying in, and blowing off social engagements, so I cancelled and said “We’ll do it another time.” Covid happened and we never did.
You treated Jen well. When she needed a ride for an appointment, you took care of it. Anybody who takes good care of my Jen is a good person in my books.
A week ago or so, after a period of serious physical pain, they finally diagnosed you with cancer. You were admitted to the hospital and you never came out. I can’t believe how quickly this happened. A few weeks ago you were active, full of fire. The only thing you hated almost as much as cancer was Donald Trump. At least you lived long enough to see him defeated. I hope you took some comfort in that. Man, you hated Trump! To me it was one of your most defining and amusing traits. You always had a great meme locked and loaded!
Man, you made me laugh.
Perhaps the only thing you really cared about as much as your own family were “the needs of the many”. It’s appropriate that I always think of you in that Captain America shirt. You were always ready to fight for those who didn’t have the fortune that we have. You were a good man. You will be fondly remembered by Jen and I, and missed terribly by your loved ones.
You really were a good man. I can’t believe you’re gone. I remember that day in early 2020, I messaged you and wrote, “I’m not feeling up to it, can we get a coffee another night? In a couple weeks maybe?”
“Sure, no problem,” you answered. I imagined your understanding smile.
The coffee that was delayed by me first, was then cancelled by Covid. “We’ll have you guys over to the house when this is all over,” you told me.
Life can change in an instant.
Rest in peace, my friend. I’m grateful you let Jen and I into your lives and I’m sad that the things we talked about doing will never happen.
What can you say about a show that does all the following in one night:
An in-depth, track by track analysis and critique of Aerosmith’s Done With Mirrors
A tribute to Christopher Plummer (R.I.P.)
CD unboxing and beer de-canning
A world premier music video
The sound of the real toilet flushing
Awesome rock and roll chit-chat for almost three full hours
Why, it could only have been the LeBrain Train! And this week, far more than 2000 words were said about Done With Mirrors. This album generated so much passionate and sometimes dispassionate discussion that it would have been a shame if everybody didn’t get to speak their piece. This album isn’t as polarizing as you might think. We all found something enjoyable, we just didn’t always agree on what was enjoyable.
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano
Episode 49 – “The Return of T-Bone”
Layin’ down some facts for you:
T-Bone is one of my favourite people,
“Let the Music Do the Talking” is one of my favourite songs,
but Done With Mirrors is one of my least favourite Aerosmith albums.
It’s been a mere two months since T-Bone last graced our show with his presence, but this time he’s coming locked and loaded with a special album deep discussion: Aerosmith’s Done With Mirrors.
Besides Deke and T-Bone, we’ll also be bringing in Uncle Meat and Buried On Mars. They are coming into the discussion with fresher ears than I, so it’ll be interesting to hear their takes.
Also: Special beer “de-canning”! Music unboxing from Encore Records! New Current River music video! All coming to you live…tonight!
Martin Popoff will be back next Friday, February 12, for a King’s X Top Five show!
We are also hard at work on plenty of list shows and returning guests. Rob Daniels and Mike Slayen will be returning when we do the Top Riffs of the 80s. Harrison the Mad Metal Mad will be back when we tackle Top Maiden Album Covers, and a few other topics that we have cooking up. And for a special 1st Anniversary show on March 19, Brent Jensen is going to talk about music that makes our skin vibrate one more time!
First breakups are so confusing. You’ve heard all the songs, seen all the movies. All that remained was to experience it yourself. Of course it’s nothing like a song! It can hurt though, lord don’t I know it?
I treated my first breakup like I was a DJ at an event. I planned songs. How did that work out? Terrible, but I did it.
When I got home and listened to some tunes, I put on “Love Song” by Tesla. I thought, “This will be the thing to listen to. That chorus will make me feel better.”
If only! “Love will find a way! Love is gonna find a way!” Encouraging, yes…but not what I needed to make myself feel better. Although I had not given up, I knew it was over. I knew that love wasn’t going to find a way. I had to think outside the box.
As it turns out, the ballads didn’t impact me as much as the heavy stuff. Angry stuff.
“Christian Woman” by Type O Negative. Metallica’s version of “Blitzkrieg”. Soundgarden’s “Jesus Christ Pose”. “Cyclops” by Bruce Dickinson. Queensryche’s “I Am I”. This was really hitting me! Some of the ballads did too, such as “Someone Else?” by Queensryche, or Bruce Dickinson’s “Change of Heart”. But those were not typical, traditional ballads like Tesla were putting out. Each was powerful in a unique way.
That’s it: power. I was looking for songs with power in them. Real power. The breakup had sucked dry all my energy, and I needed power. Those bands recharged me up like a battery. Thrashing around my bedroom, I worked out all that anger. I felt stronger after rocking out to a song like “I Am I”. And rock out I did, in my “air band” best! I gave myself a serious sweat when I rocked out to those songs.
Breakups might suck but they are a fertile ground for discovering (and rediscovering) music. What we were you listening to after your first breakup?
Tesla came right out of the box with two great studio albums in a row. Their debut Mechanical Resonance is close to perfect. Two years later they came into their own even more with The Great Radio Controversy which saw them stretch it out further. The dropped some of the more overt heavy metal influences that were heard on “Modern Day Cowboy” and went for the roots. The Great Radio Controversy provided Tesla with their biggest hit, “Love Song”, the track that got me into the band for good.
1989-90 was peak power ballad time and I loved ’em as much as any lonely highschool boy would. Bob Schipper was the Tesla fan first, but once I decided to take the plunge, I went all the way and got both albums on CD instead of cassette. Though the big hit was the ballad, The Great Radio Controversy is a tougher album overall than the debut. Once hooked by “Love Song”, other tunes made themselves immediately prominent. Unfortunately the ballad probably didn’t convey an accurate image of Tesla to the general public.
Tesla were great at writing hooks, and opener “Hang Tough” hits right away with a killer little bass intro by Brian Wheat. This hard-hitter is a killer song with dual guitars, and Jeff Keith just givin’ ‘er at the microphone. It’s a defiant tune with the kind of shouted chorus that a concert crowd could get behind. Guitars galore courtesy of Mssrs. Hannon and Skeoch. Continuing the lyrical theme of “hangin’ in there”, it’s “Lady Luck”. The punchy chorus, “Lady Luck took a walk,” has a Def Leppard vibe circa Pyromania. Jeff Keith’s convincing rasp is like a blunt instrument for delivering hooks.
The first track that really showed Tesla were a cut above the Hollywood trash was “Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)”, a track ahead of its time. With a grungy, chunky groove and acoustics layered with electrics, wah-wahs and slides, it’s Tesla doing their own thing. It has one foot in southern rock and another in molten lead. At this point, Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch were on their way to “serious guitar duo” status.
Tesla lighten up a bit on “Be a Man”, catchy and simple enough for the radio. Nicely composed for easy consumption, complete with a considerably canorous guitar solo. The skies grow dark again quickly on “Lazy Days, Crazy Nights” which sounds like it should be a party rocker, but is not. “I’m doing fine right here on borrowed time,” sings Jeff on this memorable dirge. Things get hot again on “Did it For the Money”, a slammin’ track with another riff reminiscent of a certain British band from Sheffield. They don’t slow down on “Yesterdaze Gone”, the side closer, which is only faster and more intense.
A solid side-opening “Makin’ Magic” brings the tempo back to centre. Chugging along with guitarmonies aloft, this is a nice rocker to reset the tone. This leads into another single, “The Way It Is”, which is a light rocker but not quite a ballad. Tesla’s southern side shines through. It sounds like a celebration with a little bit of Skynyrd on the side.
I have one memory regarding “Flight to Nowhere”. It was September of my last year of highschool, and for the yearbook, they wanted to take a big aerial photo. I believe we stood in the football field spelling the letters “GRCI” while a plane flew overhead taking the pictures. I remember standing near my friend Danesh, who also owned a CD of The Great Radio Controversy. This song came to our minds as we jokingly imagined doomy scenarios of plane crashes and our imminent deaths. “Goin’ down! I’m on a flight to nowhere!” Anecdote aside, this killer track is a deep cut tragically ignored over the years. As it blasts through the skies powered by the chug of electric guitars, it only gets more intense. My favourite line to repeat: “Now the headlines read all across the lands, ’bout the motherfuckers gettin’ way outta hand.” It seemed to genuinely apply to the world we lived in, as Iraq invaded Kuwait and created a powderkeg in the middle east. More importantly it captured my youthful anger at the situation the world found itself it. Motherfuckers.
The one weakness that The Great Radio Controversy has is its length. We’re on track 11 and only now getting to “Love Song”. Like “Little Suzi” on the previous LP, this one opens with a unique acoustic instrumental passage. It is a mini composition of its own, unrelated to “Love Song” with a vaguely neoclassical vibe. Yet it’s still a part of it, as one seems incomplete without the other. Either way, “Love Song” is a powerhouse, a definitive power ballad, and one of the best from a period that suffered from a glut of them. Midway it goes to a whole new level with a gut-busting Frankie Hannon lead.
Everything after this unfortunately feels like anti-climax because of the massive presence “Love Song” has on the second side. “Paradise” is a good tune, which actually sounded better when it was redone acoustically on the next album Five Man Acoustic Jam. The original is a tad overwrought, like heavy-handed Aerosmith. The final song is, appropriately enough “Party’s Over”. The riff bounces from the left speaker to the right in a cool effect, and once again I’m reminded of another five-member band from across the pond with the same management (Q-Prime).
Though song for song, The Great Radio Controversy seems the equal of Mechanical Resonance, it’s just a hint more uneven due to its longer running time. Minor quibble. Tesla had made two outstanding rock albums in a row by now and were still growing. Some say The Great Radio Controversy is the best Tesla album. I say, you be the judge.
AMERICAN DAD! – “First, Do No Farm” (Season 17, episode 14)
American Dad continued to expand its sonic palette in 2020. In a season that already included The Weeknd, the show pulled off its biggest musical “get” in 2020 with Weird Al Yankovic.
The setup: Stan Smith thinks his daughter Hayley is getting “soft”. Fed up with her overly sensitive and lazy ways, he takes inspiration from the humble farmer. Stan bulldozes the family home and sets up a “micro farm” on the property, with only a shed for everyone to live in. Everyone adopts the Waltons-like surname “Boy”. “Steve-Boy”, “Jeff-Boy”, and “Mom-Boy” for example. Creature comforts are banished. Violators are shunned. Needless to say, Roger the alien is the first to be shunned. He soon takes up with the “varmints” — rabbits.
This, reasons Stan, will make Hayley-Boy “farm tough”.
To make a short story shorter, Stan screws up big time by building a secret basement with all the food, TV and video games you could desire. He too is shunned, and moves in with Greg across the street. But he has already created a monster in Hayley. Yes, she got tough, but she also lost her heart, turning into a cold, farm working machine. This is not what Stan intended, and so he must undo what has he done. With sabotage. Varmint sabotage. Rabbitage!
“Let’s do it!” says Roger. “And do we contact Weird Al’s people? See if he’s interested in ‘Rabbitage’ as a song idea?”
Cue up Weird Al Yankovic with my favourite Beastie Boys parody yet!
Well, I didn’t write the song, and this makes ZERO sense out of context, but yeah, that was me screeching out a Beastie Boys parody last night on @AmericanDadTBSpic.twitter.com/duEI6hgH1t
As Al says, he didn’t write the lyrics, but he sure did nail that vocal part! “Listen all a-y’all it’s a rabbitage!” wails Al, as Roger and his rabbit allies destroy the farm. Sure makes you wish they recorded a full song, doesn’t it? Pretty cool collaboration. Roger, dressed as a rabbit, destroying that farm in sync with Weird Al, is worth a repeat watch.
In the B-story, Klaus the goldfish has joined Scientology, which involves unsubtle Battlefield Earth jokes. South Park did it first and better. Scientology jokes are like shooting ducks in a barrel. Fun, but way too easy.
LOUDNESS – World Tour 2018 – Rise to Glory – Live in Tokyo (2019 Ear Music)
Oldies abound. Disc 1 also includes “Loudness” (the version with Ryuichi Nishida on drums) from the 1981 debut The Birthday Eve. A slick, well-received version. There’s also a punishing “In the Mirror” from third LP The Law of Devil’s Land, and the memorable “Crazy Doctor” from 1984’s Disillusion.
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