Stan, you just had to go, I know that. You’ve been here for 95 years and entertaining us for most of them. You gave, and you gave, and you gave. You deserve your rest now.
Stan, I knew who Spider-man was before I knew the Prime Minister of Canada. You brought me the Star Wars comics that kept me going between movies. Through those pages I discovered all that so many of my favourite heroes were yours! Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men…I always preferred Marvel to DC and I can’t really explain why. I liked Superman, but the Marvel lineup was so much better than DC’s. Their characters were more interesting to me, and it was addictive, how storylines weaved through one title to another.
My dad would buy me one new comic on the trip to the cottage each time. I always chose Marvel.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some version of Spider-man is still popular in another 95 years. Perhaps these characters you helped create will be remembered as literary classics. If not, I am confident that the Marvel heroes will be a part of our cultural backdrop for a long, long time.
FU MANCHU – Clone of the Universe(2018 New Damage)
First the first time in a long time, “I’ve Been Hexed” by the brand new Fu Manchu album.
Clone of the Universe sounds cut from the same cloth as classic albums such as King of the Road and The Action is Go. Aside from the mind-bomb that is the 18 minute track “Il Mostro Atomico”, each song is short, riffy and to the point. “(I’ve Been) Hexed” is an immediate thumbs-up, a reminder of what we liked about Fu Manchu when we first heard them.
You can’t tell if “Don’t Panic” has anything to do with Douglas Adams, but it’s as fast and relentless as the UFO-themed “King of the Road”. Maybe the Sabbath-crawl of “Slower Than Light” is also about space travel; maybe it’s not. The fun is in the guessing, but by the end the song is at moving at warp. Both “Nowhere Left to Hide” and “Intelligent Worship” boast riffs carved from the stones of Mt. Iommi, contained with in the Fu Manchu groove. The title track “Clone of the Universe” is like a heavy metal hammer, or a stoner rock Mjölnir.
Despite the strong Fu Manchu grooves throughout, it is undoubtedly the side-long “Il Mostro Atomico” that is the centerpiece. Suddenly from somewhere left of center comes the “Snow Dog”; Alex Lifeson of Rush with his own style of lead guitar. Lifeson always had a knack for finding cool artists to work with outside his normal sphere. Hearing him rip and make noise with Fu Manchu is so right. Not to mention, this jam which keeps going on and on has plenty to offer when you listen all the way through.
Sunday Chuckle will return next week. This Sunday, we remember the sacrifices made by those who served their countries. For me in particular, it’s my Grandfather and his brother who fought against the Nazis in World War II that I like to remember. As dark forces encircle the world today, let us not forget those currently serving who are keeping us free.
Here are our past stories regarding Remembrance Day, please give them a click and a read.
GETTING MORE TALE #715: The Lost Chapters – “The First Year”
Ever seen High Fidelity with John Cusack? When Cusack says, “I hired these guys to come in three days a week, and they started coming in every day. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.” That was us. That me and T-Rev. The boss man hired on Trev in the fall, two months after I started. We worked opposite nights and opposite weekends. We were like ships passing in the night. We never would have gotten to be such tight friends if we didn’t keep coming into the store every freaking day!
See, as used CD store, we got in new inventory every day. We were getting in cool shit. I was just beginning to transfer my music collection over from cassette to CD, so I just started to upgrade and buy up old back catalogue. I snagged You Can’t Stop Rock And Roll by Twisted Sister that year, which was a big deal to me because it was deleted at the time. I got some Dio CDs that I never had before. I began collecting Rush in earnest. We had rarities too. I got a split King’s X / Faith No More live bootleg called Kings of the Absurb which is pretty damn good. I really got quite a few CD singles at that time too. A few previously unknown Faith No More singles dropped into my lap. It was crucial to come in frequently. If you didn’t, you might miss something you were looking for. Or something you didn’t know you were looking for.
After two months of shadowing the owner, I was working solo and loving it. I got to pick my own music every night, within reason. There were obscure rules. Judas Priest was out, but Soundgarden was OK. Anything that was a new charting release was considered OK for store play. We were allowed to open anything to play it, as long as we didn’t abuse that. For the first while we were even allowed to bring music from home.
That ended when I brought in a bunch of recent purchases to listen to one morning. They included an indi band from Toronto, called Feel, formerly known as Russian Blue. The sound was vital, and the early 90s buzz was that Toronto was going to be the next Seattle. I was all over these bands, like Slash Puppet, Russian Blue, Attitude (later Jesus Chris), Gypsy Jayne, and the rest.
[An aside: I caught a little flak when I took in a used copy of Slash Puppet. “This is an indi band,” the boss complained. “It’ll sell,” I defended myself. “Trust me I know this band.” I knew half a dozen customers by name that I could recommend it to. I sold it to the first of those guys to come in, this insurance guy named Tony who loved 80s rock. He bought it after one listen.]
The day I had my personal Feel This CD in the store player, a customer noticed it. He thought it was cool, wanted it, and asked how much. I had to tell him it was my own personal copy, and no I couldn’t order it in because it was an indi band. He would have to write to the band to get a copy, and I wrote down the information inside the CD for him.
The boss thought this was kind of a silly situation, and rightfully so. Why play music we weren’t selling and were not able to sell? This was a store. So that ended. No more bringing music from home. I guess I’m the guy who ruined it for generations of Record Store employees to come.
THE GANDHARVAS – Sold for a Smile (1997/1998 Universal US and Canadian versions)
What a band were the Gandharvas. Lead howler Paul Jago could hit those Perry Farrell highs, and they wrote some pretty fucking great songs including their major hit “The First Day of Spring”. An unappreciated gem would be their third and final album, 1997’s Sold for a Smile. Led by the anthemic single “Downtime”, this is a hard album to resist no matter which version you get. It even made our list: “88 Unrightfully Ignored Albums of the 90s“.
Versions? Yes, two: the Canadian and US have different track listings. In 1997, Canada got the basic 10 track CD. When it was released Stateside, a number of tracks including “Downtime” were remixed. The US and Canadian versions of “Downtime” have vastly different guitar solo and outro mixes, for example. The States also got two bonus tracks: a new recording of “The First Day of Spring” and a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”. (The original album was a shorty at just under 40 minutes.)
The Gandharvas turned it up a notch for this album without losing sight of their more delicate tendencies. “Gonna Be So Loose” is a slamdance of squealing vocals and chords. (This song is available remixed on the US version.) But then “Shells” is a low, strummy song perfect for the headphones. It shows of the layered vocals that are a Gandharvas trademark. “Waiting for Something to Happen” then goes somewhere between Guns N’ Roses and screamy, psychedelic punk rock — an astounding song, which then defies all logic by going acoustic. And then all over the place.
Time for a little more pop in the rock, with “Hammer in a Shell”. Snarly pop, with a sour candy coating. “Watching the Girl” was another fine single, a more streamlined song for this album. It too was remixed on the US edition, putting the guitars way louder. Then strap in for “Sarsasparilla”, a boulder-heavy rocketship blast into space. “Into the Mainstream”, then, is a bit more complex, and perhaps a little bit epic.
“Milk Ocean” leads you to the end, with a healthy dose of acidy psychedelia. It’s the closer, “Diabaloney” that’s a real head scratcher. Is it a joke? I can’t tell. “I fuck it up, I got the fuck, I got the luck,” goes one set of lines. Heavy and screamy goodness, but a real headscratcher nonetheless. What the hell did I just listen to?
On the US version, the new recording of “The First Day of Spring” is placed third in the running order, after the remixes of “Downtime” and “Gonna Be So Loose”. It’s quite a bit heavier than the original, though a brilliant song it remains. Could it be actually a polished up live version? Why does Paul Jago yell out “Colorado!” in the middle? For fun? This band is from London, Ontario not Colorado! And “Time After Time”? They twist it up, give it bite, and for better or for worse make it their own. Unless you have a serious attachment to the song, the Gandharvas’ interpretation is quite cool.
As if you can’t tell, this is an album you should own. Get one or the other, or both!
They probably thought I was going to hell the day I showed up on the first day of school in that Judas Priest T-shirt. Mrs. Powers was a devout Catholic, with a judgey side to go with it. She enjoyed publicly humiliating her “misbehaved” students. I can only imagine what she really thought. Here was her “A” student, and over summer holidays, he’s got himself a T-shirt that says “Judas Priest” on it. He’s drawing pictures of guitars in art and doing his class speech on a band called Kiss. What the devil is with that Ladano kid?
If Catholic school was ever too sedate or solemn, this was magnified 100-fold in the lenses of the 8th grade.
It was the year you made the choice of which highschool to go to. You’d undergo the Sacrament of Confirmation. It was their last chance to make sure you didn’t go off the rails and do something stupid, like do drugs or leave the church!
There was a weeklong Catholic retreat to an old convent in Ancaster called Mount Mary. “Every student I ever had who did not go to Mount Mary grew up to do drugs, or killed themselves,” said Mrs. Powers. Holy shit! I didn’t want to be there and it was obvious. It was the middle of winter and every day had extensive outdoor activities, but worse, you were not allowed to bring any of your music. No Walkmans, no tapes. There was a radio tuned to an approved radio station in one of the activity rooms. I didn’t know what to do, so before we left, I listened to and memorised as many Kiss songs as I could. Double Platinum worked for my last minute Kiss cramming session. The song I was most successful with was “Love Gun”. I had just received a taped copy of The Elder but did not have time to investigate it much. I had to go to Mount Mary instead. This intrusion into the wants and desires of my musical passions kind of pissed me off. I had to wait a week to get into The Elder. Stupid retreat. I was so scared of being caught with any contraband that I flushed my candy before getting on the bus. Humming “Love Gun” in my head, we were off.
Mount Mary conjures up some real discomfort. They were trying to teach you to be open minded about it but all I can really recall are negative feelings, and some disgusting hot chocolate. I was isolated from everything I loved and stuck with a bunch of people who I didn’t particularly like, and felt the same towards me. I knew this because we had to form circles and tell everybody something we liked about them. Nobody seemed to know much about me at all. “You like Star Wars, uhhh…and I don’t, but that’s cool.” was the most memorable.
There was a day spent outside in the snow as “hunters” and “hunted”. I don’t remember the moral of this activity. The hunters had wooden sticks as rifles, and my bully Steve Hartman was one of them. The role playing had a bizarre shade of reality. There were no explanations to us as to why people were selected for their roles. The hunted were supposed to find some specially marked trees, but I spent most of the time just hiding in the woods from hunters and teachers alike. There was another day including a long hike up something called “Agony Hill”.
The day we were released from Mount Mary and sent home was cold and wet. The snow was melting, but it was just dirty slush. My parents were supposed to pick me up when the busses arrived at the school, but I didn’t see them and vice versa, so lugged a giant heavy suitcase home through the snow. At least when I got there, a brand new Marvel Transformers comic was waiting for me with my mail in the kitchen. #17, “The Smelting Pool”, considered one of the best of the series.
“Well that’s over,” I said to myself. “Now I just have to get through the rest of this school year and it’s freedom.”
That teacher just had a bad impression of me. There was the rock and roll devilry which seemed to bring humiliating public interrogation.
“How many of you went to church this past Sunday?” she questioned the class. “Put up your hands.” She was determined to find out just how devout our behaviour was. No excuses.
About half the class raised their hands.
“How many of you were there last week?” A few more hands went up.
“And the week before?” A couple more. “How many have been to church in the last month?” She noticed me, and I noticed her. My hands were in my laps.
“MICHAEL.” Radar locked.
“WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT TO CHURCH?” she boomed.
My sister dubbed it “The Hell Hole”. The school and church are right across from each other
It had been a couple years. Powers had her “no excuses permitted” policy regarding going to church, so I didn’t even try to explain. (Essentially her policy was: You are old enough to go to church on your own now, so don’t tell me your mom was sick.) I just endured the firepower of Mrs. Powers. What else could she do; send a note home to my parents? If I wasn’t going to church, chances are they weren’t either. And there was a reason for that.
It was an Easter service a couple years prior. Good Friday mass, very busy, and the church was packed. My dad always liked to get an aisle seat so that’s what he did on Good Friday. That was his mistake.
My sister and I had better instincts. We preferred to hide somewhere in the middle of the pews. Do you know what our least favourite part of service was? The part where you have to shake hands and greet your neighbours. We were shy and would rather not, so we just turned to face each other. We’d shake hands and say, “Hello sir how are you today?” “Oh, I’m good sir and how are you?” We’d do this for as long as we could credibly ignore the adults around us trying to shake our child hands.
On Good Friday we tucked in down the pew while dad sat on the aisle, when the Priest announced that for this special service, volunteers would come and wash your feet if you were sitting on the aisle. John 13:34: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” My dad has a hard time saying no. He kicked off his shoes and socks and politely pretended not to be hating every second. And the family simply stopped going to church after this. Coincidence?
Mrs. Powers, you can judge all you like. Maybe my dad was sick of church and I was sick of your shitty school.
One of the heavy metal albums from my childhood that reminds me most of that period is Born Again, by Black Sabbath. Boy, Powers sure would have hated those lyrics. “Good life is contradiction, because of crucifixion.” You can only imagine, if she knew what was I was hearing!
The devil and the priest can’t exist if one goes away, It’s just like the battle of the sun and the moon and the night and day, Force of the devil, that’s what we’re all told to fear, Watch out for religion when he gets too near, too near….
Of course Ian Gillan isn’t a satanist; he’s just a singer! But those lyrics would have set her head on fire, if the album cover didn’t do that first. Do we mind “Disturbing the Priest”? The truth is, the words were inspired by the rehearsal sessions for the album. They were receiving noise complaints from the local church. Do we mind “Distrurbing the Priest”? “Not at all, not at all, not in the least.” Once you know the genesis of the song, the lyrics fall into place. Not exactly Catholic-friendly, but certainly not evil.
Evil-sounding though? Absolutely. Born Again might be the most traditionally evil sounding metal album in the history of the genre. That’s why the original mix is so important even though it sounds like the refuse of the Golgothan excremental demon. The lack of clarity, the muddy haze, and the echoing bottomlessness of it just add to the mystique. You should not be able to clearly hear what the singer is saying. It should remind of you a bad hazy dream. Hell, it’s not the lyrics that make it evil; it’s Geezer’s fuzzy bass!
This article was produced after discussions with friends and acquaintances from different faiths and backgrounds. Some had similar experiences. Some are still dealing with residual Catholic guilt. We were talking old church stories, and all this stuff came flooding back. The sitting, the kneeling, the hand-shaking…my sister and I singing “Stars” by Hear N’ Aid instead of the hymns…the good and the bad.
One of the school bully kids was killed four years after Mount Mary, riding his motorcycle to work. I morbidly wondered what Powers thought of that; he went to Mount Mary yet he was on her dead roster. Would she add that detail for next year’s class?
It’s obvious I still hold a lot of resentment to those school years. I wonder if that’s why I have such a strong attachment to the heavy metal music of the era. Let the psychoanalysis begin!
Mike:Holen, I’m glad you agreed to sit down and chat. I realize that you want to retain your anonymity. How would you like us to address you?
Holen: I shall be addressed as Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood. Always address me as sir. I have a very fragile ego on account of my infamous pretension, and need consistent approval from my fellow human beings to function.
Mike: OK, Sir Guybrush…it won’t be hard to remember at all, thanks for that. Now there has been reader speculation that you are from Australia. Care to comment?
Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood: Harrison needs to step up his deductive game if he ever wants to make it as a detective. I’m proudly a heartland American. Unfortunately I’m also in the Bible Belt though, so there’s a lot of evangelical bungholes here. My practicing religion is Transcendental Nihilism.
M: You’ve written some great reviews for us, but also some of the most bizarre. The Shining comes to mind. If I may be so blunt…what the hell, man?
SGT: I hope that greatness and bizarre intertwine. I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean, but I’ll put it this way. If you were a Blue Jay during a full moon on the last day of a leap year and you broke a bottle of water, what color would the sound make? You see? Now it is all clear, isn’t it?
M: Clear as mud. One of my favourite lyrics by the Canadian group Sloan goes, “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans.” Name that band for you.
SGT: That would probably be Nirvana. I don’t hate their music. I hated what they did by saying all the bands before them sucked, and Kurt’s “I’m so scared of fame that I signed to a major label and wrote a pop album” bullshit seemed so transparent to me. Nirvana does have quite a few tunes I enjoy. But their fans are a different story, especially back then. Any time a rock band reaches a mainstream level of success, they’re going to attract some crazy people. Nirvana certainly did, and Kurt decided to eat lead when they were still huge. So we’ll never see how their audiences would behave once all the fair-weather crazies just at the show for “Smells like Liquid Ass” had left them for the latest trendy group. It was those simpleton fans that ruined good music by deeming all rock that wasn’t hair metal at that point “grunge”. Seriously, any new band that didn’t have gang background vocals was grunge in the magazines. So a fantastically underrated band like Blind Melon gets written out of history because they’re seen as just a grunge band. Most people thought a grunge band meant a lesser clone of Pearl Jam or Nirvana. That’s why that scene burned out in a few years. The music was either a bad Nirvana copy, or it was being buried by bad Nirvana copies because everything was considered grunge now. Blind Melon put out two classic albums in their debut and Soup, and not many people have ever heard them because they’ll only ever be known for that single “No Rain”, which couldn’t sound less like them if it tried. It doesn’t sound like anything else they did. They’re not grunge at all! People categorizing things and forming groups ruins everything. I don’t hate Nirvana though, just the fair-weather fans that jumped on the rock bandwagon only to jump ship immediately after Kurt checked out of Hotel California.
I will have to add that people who worship Mike Patton piss me off too, they’re such fan boys. The whole “Patton is God” doesn’t mesh well with the fact that Patton is a total contrarian and the antithesis of a rock god. I love Faith No More and Mr. Bungle (Angel Dust is probably my favorite album of the ‘90s), but I don’t feel the need to suck Patton off for all of his zany projects of screaming and nasal whining. I just hate this whole worship culture. Worshipping stuff is creepy. Religious or not, having so much blind devotion for something just rubs me the wrong way. If you worship some dude, it’s like you’re trying to give the guy an oversized ego and elevating him to a status greater than a man. You can respect a guy’s work without spooning him. If I see a celebrity on the street I really don’t feel an urge to bug them. It just seems artificial.
M:As a huge Faith No More for most of my life, I totally get it. Do you have the gift of music? Can you rock an instrument?
SGT:I played the trumpet in middle school, but I quit because our band director wasn’t a character whose company I enjoyed. I can rock the drums okay, mediocre at bass, and I can come up with some decent song structures. I’m working on a single that will see the light of day hopefully by this Christmas.
M: I’ll look forward to hearing that!
I often talk of a moment of clarity. A moment when rock and roll suddenly “clicks” with a person for the first time. I wrote about mine in the first chapter of Record Store Tales. It was Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” and life was never the same again. Do you have a similar story?
SGT: I was into the rock in a casual kind of way for a while, just the singles and crap like that. I listened to the first few Van Halen albums quite a lot, but I didn’t feel like I was getting any kind of deep connection. It was enjoyable, but not much more. Then I got Permanent Waves by Rush and it all started to click. That’s still my favorite Rush album, every song is fucking spectacular. That’s when the album format revealed itself to me, and I truly took on the Kids in the Hall mantra of “greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls” from their record store skit on The Doors.
I had a narrow mind of what I thought rock could be until I listened to Rush. They really opened my head because the next album I got after Permanent Waves was Signals. Signals happened to be way different than Permanent Waves. It had many more keyboard orientated songs and it didn’t rock quite as hard. Not nearly as guitar orientated, but I grew to love it because the songs were great. It opened my mind wide to diversity in rock music, and how it could incorporate influences from other genres and contemporary sources. It was also the first of many times I’ve pooped my pants listening to music. It was that good.
M: Changing gears for a moment. Farts: proud of ’em?
SGT: That depends on the situation and your relationship status. If you’re single and really looking to establish a connection with a nice girl, then it’s probably best to blame it on the dog. But if the two of you have been dating for a while, I say loud and proud, or as Pantera would say, “Hot and Heavy”.
Stand up and squeeze. That will single-handedly gain you the favor of her dad, more than anything else you could possibly do for her. If it turns out that it’s more than gas coming out, make sure to aim for the wall and do a terrible job cleaning it up. This will anger your girlfriend and she’ll ultimately just clean it for you. That way when you’re married you can shit all over the place and never have to pick it up, and you can still blame it on the dog for poops and giggles. Take extra care to miss the toilet when you’re in the bathroom. The more time she spends cleaning is less time she spends nagging. Just don’t get it on any of her things or you will feel the wrath.
M: Who’s the coolest person you’ve ever interviewed? How about the worst?
SGT: I don’t know about coolest, but I once contacted a dead guy using an Ouija board. He was pretty rude. But I guess when you’re dead you’re entitled to be rude. I don’t think I should tell you what he said because it’s pretty heinous. Actually, the body part of mine he wanted to use rhymes with heinous. Let’s just leave it at that.
M: What bands, still alive and kicking, do you still want to scratch off your concert bucket list?
SGT: I want Racer X to do another tour so Paul Gilbert can blow my mind with Street Lethal in person. That album slays, the riff to the title track is one of the coolest I’ve ever heard. So complicated and yet still pretty catchy.
M: What’s the last great band you discovered?
SGT: There’s this band that started up in the 1960s that I’m not sure how many people have heard of. I only found out about them because I read an article about them getting sued for this song they wrote called “Stairway to Heaven”. The band is called Led Zeppelin, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of them? I don’t know if they were ever that big, but they had quite a few albums and a weird concert movie. It’s a fun time; you should check them out if you’ve never heard of them. You’re LeBrain so you might know them.
M: You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?
SGT: No, but have you ever rubbed another man’s rhubarb? Do you wanna get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts! Honey-roasted preferably, those are the best kind. You’re buying, right?
M: I’ll play the nut allergy card. Thanks for doing this interview with us. In the last Reader Spotlight, Harrison listed the members of his “dream super group”. Care to take up the gauntlet and try your own?
SGT: Yeah, I can manage that.
Roger Waters – Bass, backing vocals
Geddy Lee – Bass, backing vocals
Billy Sheehan – Bass
Tony Levin – Bass
Geezer Butler – Bass
Bob Daisley – Bass
Sting – Bass, backing vocals
David Ellefson – Bass, backing vocals
Jason Newsted – Bass, backing vocals
Steve Harris – Bass
Eddie Jackson – Bass, backing vocals
Derek Smalls – Bass, backing vocals
Ben Shepherd – Bass, backing vocals
John Paul Jones (he’s from that Led Zeppelin band) – Bass
James Lomenzo – Bass
Paul McCartney – Bass, backing vocals
Gene Simmons – Bass, backing vocals
Eric Avery – Bass
John Deacon – Bass
Jack Blades – Bass, backing vocals
Rob Grange – Bass
Billy Gould – Bass
Gary Karr – Bass
Flea – Trumpet
Glenn Danzig – Lead Vocals
Stewart Copeland – Hi-hat
Rick Wakeman – Keyboards
Bill Brufford – Drums
Phil Collins – Drums, backing vocals
Stephen Perkins – Steel Drums
Phil Rudd – Drums
They would ideally get up on stage and tour playing “Big Bottom” by Spinal Tap. They would immediately leave the building after playing this one song. Hopefully one of the bass players would hit the infamous brown note and the entire audience would shit their pants. If Chris Squire was still alive he’d be on the list too.
Thanks Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood also known as Holen MaGroin!
GRETA VAN FLEET – Anthem of the Peaceful Army (2018 Republic Records)
Greta Van Fleet have become one of the most controversial new bands in a dog’s age. They are either lauded or loathed for their slavish adherence to a classic Led Zeppelin niche. It wasn’t cool of them to claim that Aerosmith was a bigger influence — we know the truth. Just like somebody from Kingdom Come claimed he’d never heard Led Zeppelin. It was bullshit in 1988 and it’s bullshit in 2018.
The problem is, Greta Van Fleet are pretty good. They’re young, they’re impressionable, and this is their first real album. Every band should be allowed some leeway so early in their careers. Especially when, in 2018, that classic Zeppelin sound is so refreshing. They might get young kids into that sound. When I was 15, I wouldn’t give Led Zeppelin a chance because they looked old-fashioned and the lead singer wore sandals on stage. I did, however, listen to Kingdom Come.
What makes the band special is singer Josh Kiszka. A voice like this is rare. A younger, smoother Robert Plant, perhaps. He will eventually develop and come into his own. His soaring voice makes “Age of Man” such an impressive opener that you will have to keep going. Its slow, epic quality is unusual for an opener, and sets the tone for an album that might take itself too seriously, but not at the expense of good music.
There’s nothing as blazingly celebratory as “Highway Tune”, but admit it or not, Greta Van Fleet have written an album’s worth of good songs. “Cold Wind” rocks. It’s loaded with obvious Zeppelin references like an outtake from Physical Graffiti. They captured a Bonham-esque drum sound to go with it, but haters will be nauseated by Josh’s “ma-ma-ma-ma” improvisations. “When the Curtain Falls” might have been chosen as a single because it sounds so Zep (with hints of Deep Purple), but it’s not the strongest song here. They sound better when using tasteful doses of keyboards, like on “Lover, Leaver (Taker Believer)”, an epic and one of the most slammin’ tunes. (Great slide guitar too.)
Their acoustic “You’re the One” is Zeppelin III oversimplified; a good tune but not enough to fill the shoes it’s trying to be in. “New Day” is better because it doesn’t adhere to the blueprint. Also a lil’ different is “Mountain of the Sun”, but Josh’s yodel-like vocal affectations might be too much. Still, check out the apocalyptic “Brave New World”, definitely a step in the right direction. It gets a little wobbly again at the end, with a return to the hippie Zeppelin acoustic format.
Anthem of the Peaceful Army is a good album for a debut long-player. They will have to continue to step it up. In the meantime, this collection of songs will be spending lots of time in my ears this winter.
Yesterday my mom got home from a vacation in China. She went with my Aunt and some friends; my dad stayed home. She kept us posted every day via email. Facebook is blocked in China, but her emails came in steadily with pictures attached. In one email from Beijing, she said that the following day they were flying out to see the famous Terracotta Army.
Even my dad was impressed.
“Did you read that your mother is going to see the Chocolate Warriors?” he asked me.
Terracotta dad, not Chocolate! Although a Chocolate Army is one I wouldn’t mind sinking my teeth into.
GETTING MORE TALE #713: End of the Road? Paul Stanley’s Voice
In 2012, before the release of the last Kiss album Monster, I wrote an editorial about Paul Stanley’s voice problems. Thanks to the advent of Youtube, anyone can hear how rough Paul’s voice has become in the last decade. The guy who was once one of the top singers in rock, ever, is now the worst singer in Kiss!
Curiosity in Kiss and Paul’s voice has peaked again due to the End of the Road tour. I received some hits from a Q&A site called Quora, so I followed the address and checked out the site. I found something very interesting, from a man named Kevin Richards, who says he was a vocal coach for Paul Stanley and others such as Rod Stewart. His story checks out. Mr. Richards answered a question about Paul’s current vocal state, and it was very revealing indeed.
Richards said that Paul’s vocals today are a result of health and age. He is also trying to live up to his own image too hard. “He is trying to maintain a stage presence from 25 years ago and doesn’t realize he isn’t in the vocal shape to do so. He is being VERY STUBBORN in doing anything that changes what he thinks the audiences expectation of the ‘Starchild’ should be. The way he moves, the way he sings, etc.”
Paul is still great as a frontman, but to me, it’s the music that matters more, and the voice is the biggest part of that. Richards continued, saying he “told Paul that he needs to rethink how he sings his songs because it’s not 1990 or 1984 or 1976 anymore. He had to make adjustments to his vocal delivery and rearrange the set lists to give him more space between his songs. He reluctantly agreed but again stressed the ‘needs’ of the audience. I said ‘yes, but they also have an expectation that you sound good at THEIR concert. Bad vocal performances aren’t rumour anymore, its on Youtube the next day.'”
You have to admire Paul for wanting to give fans a level of showmanship above and beyond the call of duty, but his priorities seem mixed up. Richards’ bottom line is that Paul is a “stubborn, aging rocker refusing to accept that he can’t perform like he’s 30 anymore.” There is even more, so be sure to read what he had to say.
“Great” form? I’ll let you know how Paul sounds when Kiss hit Toronto in March 2019. Can Stanley’s voice survive a whole tour? Will there be more Gene, Eric and Tommy vocals to compensate? We will find out at the End of the Road.
mikeladano.com